


Trip to Sacramento

by chalametsberm



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Lady Bird (2017)
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-03-24 14:06:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 37,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13812762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chalametsberm/pseuds/chalametsberm
Summary: Someone once posed the question: what would it be like if Kyle and Elio met?This is an attempt at an answer. The year is 2002, and Kyle and Elio are both 17. Sorry.





	1. 1 (Elio POV)

Elio POV: AU Late Summer 2002 (Elio is 17, please suspend some disbelief but everything else is the same) 

Elio was nervous about the exchange program. He couldn’t tell anyone this, of course, because he had begged and pleaded so desperately to apply for the program in the first place. He knew that he wanted to go to college in the states, and he figured that this would be the perfect jumping off point to really experience what that was like. The only problem? He filled out the form wrong. He got into the program that he applied for, but it wasn’t the program he wanted. He thought he had applied for New York, the city where everything happened. (And where Oliver happened to be.) Instead, he got into a different program, and he cursed himself for not paying more attention in typing classes. He wasn’t going to New York or the east coast at all: he was going to Sacramento. He was going to be the house guest of a guy his age: Kyle Scheible. 

His name sounded odd and so very American in his mouth. Elio figured he was going to have to get used to saying it, so he walked around the villa on the last couple of days of summer saying his name out loud. Elio’s mother was less than excited about sending her only son to Sacramento of all places for an entire semester, but she was still insisting on helping him pack. Elio was a chronic under-packer, entirely sure that he wouldn’t need most of what his mother insists he brings. He didn’t think that this seventeen-year-old he was going to live with was going to be taking him to fancy dinners, so he certainly would not need a sports jacket. 

She had gone to the lengths of checking the weather forecast for as far in the future as she could in order to help him pack. The reality was Sacramento was pretty much temperate all the time, and Elio had nothing to worry about. If anything, he was going to get too spoiled living there for a semester and not want to go back to the brutally hot days in Italy. Elio, for the most part, put up with his mother’s doting, because this was the longest they would be apart for the first time, and Elio knew she was very concerned about this. He hated to admit it, but he was a momma’s boy through and through. 

His father wasn’t worried at all about the upcoming trip, mostly because he was excited to hear about everything that Elio would learn while in the states. It was clear that he was still worried about how sensitive Elio was after Oliver left, and both he and his mother were doing everything they could to make his life easier and less painful on all other aspects. 

Part of the program was that they had to be pen pals for the months leading up to Elio moving into their house. They didn’t really talk about a lot, but it seemed like they had some stuff in common. They both smoked and liked to read. Kyle had asked Elio about his favorite books and Elio told him. Elio had offered to ship over some of his favorite books, but Kyle didn’t want that. He said that he didn’t trust the United States Postal Service with anything bigger than a letter. It seemed like the fact that they were even corresponding at all was a huge thing for Kyle. Elio was thankful that Kyle was so goddamn confusing because it was a puzzle to keep his mind off of Oliver. 

Finally, it was the end of the summer and the day that Elio would be flying for an ungodly amount of time to California. When his parents dropped him off at the airport, he started to panic. He really didn’t know anything at all about California, he had spent all of his time learning about New York, the culture and high paced life being something that inspired him. It was nothing like the slow-paced town of B., but he had no idea what to expect from Sacramento. 

Elio settled into his seat and got out a book that he hoped would help him in understanding what he was getting himself into: it was called The People’s History of the United States. Kyle had mentioned it in a letter, and it seemed like it would be a good read. It was different than anything that Elio had read before, but he was determined to make sure that his host would like him. 

Elio was nervous to fly. Well, he wasn’t that nervous, but once he went through customs he had gotten nervous. Mafalda, had, unbeknownst to him, packed Italian sausage and a variety of snacks in his suitcase that was not allowed to leave the country. So, after an uncomfortable conversation with customs, Elio was on his way, with a much lighter suitcase. 

He was told that someone was going to be picking him up at the airport, but he didn’t know who it would be. On the long plane ride, that by small miracle was one way, he had read the entirety of the book that Kyle had suggested. After that, he tried to sleep for a little while, but every time he closed his eyes, all he saw where bright blue ones. He really hoped that being in America would make him feel better, not make him think about Oliver so much. Maybe it was for the best that he was going to be on the other side of the country from him. There was no way that they would ever run into each other this way. 

Elio woke up to the man that was sitting next to him jostling him. He was surprised at how angry he looked, but collected himself and joined the line of people waiting to get off the flight. It was shocking to him how rushed everyone seemed when really, there was nowhere to go. His tall, lanky frame was too large to stand up fully, so he was hunched over like he was in pain. While people were filing out, Elio was letting them go by him. The man was clearing his throat beside him. Finally, an older woman took pity on him and probably saw the man’s expression and let him get into the aisle in front of her. 

Elio realized that flying was not his strong suit, but this made that abundantly obvious. He walked off of the plane, happy to be able to stand up all the way. He never really stood up straight, but this was much better than having to crouch on the plane. Going through customs was hard because he didn’t fill the form outright, and the TSA agent was giving him a really hard time. As he walked out of SMF, he realized he didn’t know who he was looking for. He suddenly wished that he had accepted his mother’s offer of buying him a phone he could use while he was in the states. 

He saw a guy about his age sitting on the ground, smoking. Next to him was a sign that said “Eliot Pearlman”. Elio grimaced and thought about this “Kyle” and his lack of attention to detail. Elio squatted down and tapped him on the shoulder. This apparently freaked him out. 

“Hey, don’t do that, man, Jesus.”

“Sorry. I think you’re supposed to be picking me up? I’m Elio.” Elio stuck out his hand. This reminded him of the last person he met. If he was being honest, everything reminded him of Oliver, so this wasn’t a revelation. 

“You shake hands? Weird.” Kyle instead used Elio’s outstretched hand to pull himself off the curb and gestured with his head for Elio to follow him. 

They were walking in fairly comfortable silence, and Elio thought that Kyle sort of looked like him. He looked much more American, with shaggy hair and a Nirvana t-shirt on, but he could see some resemblance. 

“So, Eliot, you been to the states before?” 

“It’s actually Elio.” 

“Very cool, very European.” Elio didn’t appreciate the mixed signals he was getting, but he figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to get on Kyle’s bad side within the first day of them meeting. 

“Yeah, I have been to the states. Have you ever been out of the country?”

“No” Kyle threw his cigarette to the floor and stomped it out, punctuating his ‘no’. “Don’t trust planes.”

Elio didn’t want to ask. He frankly didn’t care. He thought that this might be because of last September, but he had a feeling it was a different reason. 

“They’re on the grid, ya know?” Kyle continued, unprompted. “I try to live as off the grid as possible.” 

They had made it to the car, thankfully, and Kyle notably didn’t offer to help Elio with his luggage. It seemed like, at some points, Kyle was so engaged in what he was saying that he forgot he was talking to someone else. Elio didn’t want to judge Kyle too quickly, though, because he would have to be living with him for an entire semester. There was nothing worse in his mind than the idea of having to call his parents to come pick him up at the airport before he was due back home. 

On the drive through Sacramento, Elio tried to take note of the surroundings. He was surprised that the landscape was beautiful. He was so used to thinking about America as some kind of concrete jungle, but there was greenery, and it was really quite nice. Elio was going to ask Kyle about himself, and talk about what he did around Sacramento, but then Kyle turned on the radio. He didn’t know exactly what was playing, but it was some grungy music that seemed very in character for Kyle to like, even if he didn’t know him very well at all. 

When they finally pulled up to the house, Kyle once again made no moves to help Elio with his luggage. He was once again happy that he fought with his mother about how much he should bring and had only ended up bringing a backpack and one suitcase. He did end up packing a blazer, but he didn’t really need very many outfits, as he was going to be attending a school with a uniform. He was happy for this. 

Rolling his suitcase and following Kyle into the house, they walked through the living room, and Elio saw a man that he assumed was Kyle’s father sitting and watching television, with some kind of breathing apparatus connected to his face. He didn’t know if he should say anything to this man, but Kyle broke the silence for them.

“Elio, this is my dad.” 

Elio reached out his hand to shake Kyle’s dad’s hand. His hand was cold and fragile, Elio regretted that he was the kind of person to shake hands, but he committed to the action. “Hello, sir.”

“He doesn’t talk much. He’s dying of cancer if you were wondering what that stuff on his face was.”

Elio didn’t know what to say. Kyle was blunt like Oliver was, but in a much different way. Oliver was blunt in the way that he said what he thought would alleviate whatever pain the situation was putting himself in, but Kyle seemed to be blunt for shock value alone. Elio didn’t mind. He just hoped that Kyle would be easier to understand than Oliver was, even if they didn’t get along very well. 

They walked into a small guest room, and Kyle pointed at the uniform on the bed. It seemed like it had been ironed, a gesture that did not go unnoticed by Elio. 

“This is your room. That’s the uniform they force us to wear. K. See ya.”

And with that, Kyle was walking out the door. Elio stopped him before he could make it all the way out because he figured he should somehow tell his parents that he had made it to the house that he would be living in for the semester. 

“Hey, um, can I possibly use your phone? I can pay for the long distance, I just need to tell my family that I got here okay.”

“You don’t have a cell phone? What, are they like ten years behind in Italy or something?”

“No, I don’t.” Elio was embarrassed. He didn’t know why he was, but he was. It didn’t seem that weird to not have a cell phone, almost no one he knew at home had one. Mafalda used to go on tirades about how pointless the things are, that she already dealt with enough annoying calls on their home phone. 

“Good.” Elio was shocked. He did not expect this reaction at all. He thought he would be mocked. Something about the way Kyle carried himself had an air of anger that Elio didn’t understand, and was certainly scared of. “They’re basically tracking devices, you know.” 

Elio didn’t know if maybe he was parroting what his parents had said about cell phones, in the way that he had parroted his aunt on the subject of Anchise and whether or not his character was good. Elio didn’t really have an opinion, and frankly, he didn’t mind Anchise, but he wanted to have a strong stance. He tried to not show the confusion so apparently on his face. 

“Oh, I see.” 

“Come on, the landline is in the kitchen.” Kyle led Elio to the kitchen, where his mother was bustling around making dinner. 

“Hello, Mrs. Scheible. Thank you for having me in your house, I really appreciate it.”

“Hello! You must be Elio. So sorry for the mess.” Mrs. Scheible went in and hugged Elio. That surprised him. No adult had ever been so excited to see him, to have him in their presence, but he accepted the hug graciously. He looked around the kitchen, confused. The ‘mess’ that she was talking about was nowhere to be seen. That reminded him of the way Mafalda would fuss around the house making sure that everything was perfect. 

“I was just wondering if I might use your phone to call my parents? They asked me to call them to tell them I arrived safely.”

“Oh, honey, of course! I’m sure they must be worried sick by now!” 

She pointed him to the phone on the wall and then left the kitchen, probably to give him some privacy, which was a kind gesture that he appreciated. The phone didn’t ring for more than four rings before his mother picked up. He wondered if his phone call had woken them up. 

“Hello?”

“Mom?”

“Ellie? Did you get there safe?” 

“Yes, I just got here, they gave me my own room and everything.”

“Are they being nice to you? Are they feeding you?”

Elio laughed. His mom was such a mom sometimes. That being said, he did appreciate it. He loved the feeling of being doted on, especially because that might not last forever. He was growing up fast, and mothers didn’t dote like this forever. 

“I have only been here for five minutes, mom, how could they have already fed me?” He knew the answer to this though. If this was his house, both his mother would be eager to give the guest all kinds of food. But this wasn’t his house. This wasn’t the villa. He was excited and scared about that, but the whole reason he was there was to go outside of his comfort zone. 

“Listen, I should go, this phone call is not free. I love you. I’ll write.” Elio was eager to hang up the phone because he knew his mother would sense that something was off. He didn’t know what it was, but there was something wrong. It was probably the combination of being somewhere new, and being in that place away from Oliver. He wasn’t that far away, he was closer than he would have been in Italy, but he was still too far away for his liking. 

Kyle walked into the kitchen. “Hey man, you wanna go to the deuce?” 

Elio had no idea what this meant, but he figured he should try to bond with Kyle. “Yeah, sure. Hey, do you think we could stop somewhere that I could exchange my money? I could really go for a cigarette.”

“You smoke?” Elio was confused. He sounded shocked. Kyle was literally smoking a cigarette when he had picked him up at the airport earlier that day. 

“Uh, yeah.” Elio was going to say that he didn’t have to smoke around Kyle, but that didn’t make any sense. He was going to try to get along with him but he wasn’t that desperate. 

“You roll your own?” 

Elio didn’t care to roll his own cigarettes. It was tiring, and frankly, he just wasn’t very good at it. “No, not really. Do you?” It was clear that Kyle did, but maybe he wanted to talk about it. Elio was not that perceptive, but he wasn’t an idiot. 

“Yeah, I’m trying to stay out of the economy. I don’t want to support big businesses.”

Elio decided not to point out that tobacco was probably one of the biggest big businesses because it wasn’t like he was about to stop smoking for Kyle’s benefit. “Ah. I get it, man.” Something about the way Kyle talked to him made Elio try to imitate his slow Californian drawl. Normally, he would have tried to fit a lot more words into his sentences, but it seemed like people actually cared what he had to say here. He wasn’t a kid here, but a person with actual thoughts and opinions that mattered. 

“Let’s go to the deuce. I want to introduce you to people.”

Elio didn’t know what the deuce was, but he quickly realized that it was literally a parking lot. That was it. A parking lot. He thought about where he hung out in B., and the difference in the landscape was shocking. There was another car parked there, and a couple of people standing around it. They seemed to be the same age, and a couple of them looked up when the car pulled into a spot. 

Kyle got out of the car, and they all greeted him like a god. Elio could see that Kyle was one of those people that seemed effortlessly cool, someone that everyone wanted to be friends with. Or, at the very least, know tangentially. 

Everyone seemed to be cool in their own, hard to explain way. There were Jenna and Jonah, who were very much in love. The kind of in love that was very in your face. This made Elio angry, but he didn’t know why. Kyle talking to him snapped him out of it. 

“You’re gonna get hella tail here, you know that, right?”

Elio was confused. He knew that he wasn’t bad looking, but he didn’t know why Kyle would say that. “What?”

“You’re exotic. Chicks at our sister school are going to go crazy for you. Isn’t that right, Jenna?”

Jenna popped her gum and nodded. It was going to be a long semester.


	2. Kyle POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyle's POV this will switch back and forth.

Kyle nodded to himself and went to sit where he always did when he went to The Deuce: on the hood of his car. He had signed up for the cultural exchange program before his life went to absolute shit. By the time he was in the eye of the storm, though, he was already hearing about who was going to come live at his house and go to Xavier Prep with him for the semester. It was Kyle’s last year, and he was more than ready to be out and gone. 

Everything was hanging on the ledge. His dad was dying, and he knew that. He knew that his dad would miss a lot of his life, and he was so angry. The biggest problem was that he didn’t have anyone to be angry at. So, he decided he was going to be angry at every single person until he settled on who the right target for his rage was. 

Elio struck him as someone that he could have gotten along with. He didn’t want to write him off, but it was his MO as of late. The thing that Kyle did notice when he first looked at Elio was how similar their eyes were. Elio’s eyes were glossy and looked like they were open and happy, but if you looked at them more, there was sadness there. Kyle wondered what that sadness was, but he was dealing with too much of his own shit to try to fix someone else. 

Kyle knew that it was hypocritical to love sitting on his BMW, but it was the perfect place to smoke and be a part of the group without feeling any of the need to actually join in any conversation. Jenna and Jonah and the rest of them had been friends since the beginning of freshman year, and it just made sense to keep it that way. Kyle was deep in thought when Elio walked over to him. 

“Hey man, got a light?” Kyle smirked. Of course, he was trying to bond with him, and this seemed like the easiest way to do it. He didn’t want to be easy, his brick walls went all the way up. 

“I don’t use lighters. Butane is really fucking up the ozone.” 

Elio looked like he wanted to say something contrary to this. It seemed like maybe at home, Elio was the kind of person that would say whatever he wanted and his parents would listen. That was not the case at Kyle’s house. Elio would learn that soon enough. 

“Do ya have matches?” Kyle took the matchbook out of his pocket and shoved them into Elio’s chest. That would give him the message. 

“Here.” Kyle hopped of the trunk of the car and slapped Elio on the back. Kyle was fairly small, but Elio was even smaller, easily rocked by the force of Kyle’s hand. Kyle made a note of that. He walked over to where Jenna and Jonah were talking in between intense make-out sessions. Everyone stopped talking to look at him. This was the kind of power that he loved and was the main reason he still hung out with them. 

“So, what do you guys think?” 

“About Eliot?” Jenna asked. God, she was intolerable. But, her hotness made it so that her friends were hot, by some kind of logic, so she was an asset. 

“It’s Elio,” Kyle said with an air of confidence that hid the fact that he didn’t know that until less than two hours ago. 

“Is he gonna be at Xavier?” 

“No, Jonah, he’s going to be at Immaculate Heart.” Kyle shoved Jonah. “Obviously he’s going to go to Xavier.” Jonah was a real pain in Kyle’s ass, but he was one of his only real friends, so he put up with him. 

Kyle saw things as before and after. Before his dad got sick, before he agreed, at least with himself that he wouldn’t lie again before he decided that this last year of high school was a gigantic waste of time. And now, a more recent before: before he decided if he was going to try to be friends with this Elio kid or not. 

He appreciated that Elio hadn’t barged into the conversation. He thought it was probably pretty obvious they were talking about him, and because of that, he was keeping his distance. Kyle wasn’t one to invite people in, he didn’t really have the energy to support anyone else, but he figured he might as well try to get along with this guy that would be living with him for a semester. 

Kyle nodded at Elio and tilted his head in a “come over here if you want to” kind of gesture. Kyle was not going to be making any kind of huge changes in his life, just because there was this new small Italian boy in it. He had other things that were more pressing. He was deep in the process of trying to make his band, L’Enfance Nue more legitimate, and that was taking up a lot of his time. 

Elio strolled over. There was something about the way that Elio walked around that struck Kyle as confident, but unsure at the same time. He was jealous. He knew that Elio would have girls all over him for the semester, there was no way around that. Elio just had this face that he knew girls would trust. He knew that, mainly, because he knew that he did not have that kind of face. 

Elio stomped out his cigarette mid-walk. Kyle made a mental note of this move because it was cool as hell, and he was absolutely going to steal it. 

Jonah spoke up, talking really only to Elio at this point. Kyle tried not to seize up too much with jealousy. 

“Hey, man, we have a show tomorrow, you should come, since you’re living with our bassist, after all.” Jonah was talking too loud. It was clear he didn’t think that Elio spoke English very well. Jonah was really an idiot. Kyle had told them that the guy that was going to be staying with them spent a lot of time in the states, and only some time in Italy, but they didn’t exactly have great memories. 

“You guys play in a band?” Elio’s voice was much quieter than Jonah’s, and he realized his mistake. 

“Yeah, L’Enfance Nue.” Jonah laughed. Elio did, too. “It means-“

“Naked babies, yeah.” 

Kyle was shocked. This guy not only spoke Italian and English, but he also spoke French? He might as well be invisible for the rest of his high school career. He never expected that the absolute nerd he was writing letters too would threaten his status so much. People didn’t think that he cared about his status at all, but that was carefully constructed. He didn’t look like he cared because he was comfortable where he was on the scale. 

“You play any instruments?” Jonah, late to the party, was finally understanding that Elio had a firm grasp of the English language and had stopped shouting. 

If Elio played any instruments, Kyle was officially done for. He might as well just send Elio to Xavier in his uniform and get off the grid earlier than he expected to be able to. 

Elio shrugged. “Yeah, but not very well.” Kyle was suspicious, he could smell the fake humility from a mile away. 

“What do you play?” 

“Piano, mostly, and some guitar.” Elio was a goddamn Renaissance man. Kyle could practically see the Immaculate Heart girls drooling from across the church aisle already. Kyle debated announcing a pact of celibacy, but that felt too extreme. Kyle was used to being the mysterious one at school, but now there was actually someone that no one knew. 

“We should go home.” Elio looked confused, but he nodded. He was probably tired from the flight, anyways, and it didn’t seem like he was trying to get on Kyles’s bad side just yet. 

They settled into Kyle’s BMW and drove for a while in silence that wasn’t terrible but wasn’t great. Kyle was staring at the road with an intensity that he hadn’t used since taking his driver’s test. Elio was eventually the one to break the silence. 

“Your friends seem nice.” Kyle laughed. His friends weren’t nice, they were all self-obsessed assholes, but who wasn’t these days? 

“They’re fine.” Kyle was not in the business of giving Elio any more information than he needed. Elio seemed to have no problem with Kyle being cold and elusive. They got home from The Deuce relatively quickly, there was a reason that they went there to hang out; it was close to everyone’s houses. 

They walked in, and Kyle stole away to his room. He wanted time alone. He wanted to practice his bass and read his book and smoke out of his window like he would normally be doing. He worried that he would have to give Elio an excuse of some kind, but Elio did that for him.

“Hey, I’m gonna lay down for a little, if that’s okay. The flight seems to be catching up with me.” 

“Sure.”

Kyle went to his room and practiced his bass in the mirror for a while. He needed to look perfect for the show tomorrow. He often thought about whether or not his intentions for being in the band were pure or not. A lot of people assumed that he was in one to get girls, but he didn’t think that was the full reason. It wasn’t like playing the bass was his passion, but it was something to do with his time. He despised going to Xavier, well he didn’t really, but it felt like the right opinion to have. Xavier was something that he was doing for his dad. That’s what he told people, at least. Anyone smart enough would be able to tell that he had started going to Xavier before his dad got sick, but he didn’t let anyone in enough for them to know anything that personal. 

He had some things in common with Elio, he wanted to think about what they had in common rather than what was different about the two of them. Neither of them was very athletic, on the scrawnier side, and lanky as hell. Kyle thought assumed that Elio also probably had a terrible month or two of extreme growth to get to be as tall as he was. Elio seemed to be interested in the same extra-curriculars as Kyle was, but Kyle knew that Elio was smarter than him. Although this is something he would never admit, his intellect was something that was a huge insecurity. 

Kyle walked to the window that he called the ‘smoking window’ in his head and propped it open. He lit a cigarette and went to work reading his book. He felt like he was cheating because he used a lighter and a pre-rolled cigarette, but it was hard to be the same person with an audience and alone. Kyle nodded to himself. That sounded cool as hell, and he was already planning on who would be the best person to flex his poetic knowledge on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your comments, I hope I didn't botch Kyle's POV too much, he's a tricky one, that Kyle. Anyways comment suggestions and or send me stuff on tumblr @lilchalamet
> 
> also i feel like jonah isn't jenna's bf's name in lady bird but i cant fuckin figure out what his name is, so i guess i made it so that it is him sorry if you're hella pissed about that


	3. Elio POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter with Elio POV.

Elio POV

Elio woke up in the early morning, thanks to jet lag. Luckily, he was feeling rested after flying to Sacramento all the way from his summer in Italy. There was a lot to get over, the flight, being away from his family, and being away from Oliver. Elio didn’t consider that being in the states would make him think about Oliver so much. But, he had hidden in plain sight. It was too easy to see things that reminded him of the little things about Oliver that confused him so much. It occurred to him now that these things were just distinctly American. 

Elio wandered into the kitchen, unsure of what to do now that he was a visitor in the house. He hated not knowing what to do, how to behave, what he should do with his damn arms. He settled on crossing them in front of his chest and thought about finding coffee somewhere maybe. On the walk to the kitchen, he passed Kyle’s dad. 

“Good morning, Mr. Scheible.” 

He didn’t respond, but Elio thought that might be the intense breathing apparatus on his face, rather than stoic anger. Then again, he really had no way of knowing. It was only seven am, and he figured now was as good a time as any to explore the town. He had no way of getting around other than on foot, but that wasn’t something that he minded. He thought it would be a good task to go in search of cigarettes. Kyle had said something about his tendency to hand roll cigarettes, but that was something that he could never get into. 

Elio spots the American Market and Deli and walks in. There’s a great mural on the side of the wall, another reminder of how different America is from Italy. He popped in and walked around. He wanted to find more differences. Really, this was just another place where he was not with Oliver. 

He bought a pack and a lighter because he would be damned if he was going to use matches the whole time he was in Sacramento. He hoped that he would get along with Kyle, but that seems like it was a far-off dream. There was something about him that he didn’t understand. It was like he could at some points see through him and understand what was going on, but there were so many different walls up that it seemed hopeless. Elio hated that he wanted people to like him so much, but it felt like it would make things easier if the person he was going to be living with and going to school with liked him. Worst case, he had his music and his books, but no one really liked being lonely. 

He walked by a huge blue house and something about it made him stop in his tracks. It was an amazing house, but it seemed fake. It didn’t seem lived in at all. It reminded him of how the villa always had cracks in the paint and some screws missing on the hinges of doors to show how lived in it was. The lawn outside was gorgeous. He learned later that these were the nice houses, in “the 40’s”. 

Before he knew it, he was back at the Scheible house. He was still smoking, so he finished his cigarette on the steps outside the front door. It didn’t seem like anyone else was awake inside, apart from the dad. He kind of went in and out of awake and asleep throughout the day. Elio hated not knowing what to do with himself. He decided to just go back to his room and try on his uniform to make sure it fit. He was sure it would; it was just normal pants and a blazer, but he thought it would take up some time. 

When he walked into the house, he saw that Kyle was drinking coffee that he had French pressed. He nodded at the pot, suggesting Elio have some. 

“Coffee?”

“Sure, thanks.” Elio figured that could bring comradery between them, he had a soft spot for French pressed coffee, it reminded him of the brutally strong coffee Mafalda made at the villa. Elio went to pour himself a cup and glanced up at Kyle. It was clear that Kyle had a very strong opinion on how people took their coffee. 

“Do you drink your coffee with milk?”

“No, not really.”

“Good. It messes with the flavor, ya know?”

Elio took a sip and just nodded. Some things were easier to just agree with, he was starting to learn. The coffee wasn’t great, it was just fine. It was clear that he thought he was some kind of aficionado, but that might have just been a front. Kyle was really hard to read. 

“We have a show at New Helvetia later, if you wanted to come.”

Elio sighed, relieved. He had heard Kyle talking about it at The Deuce yesterday, but he wasn’t sure if he was going to be invited. It wasn’t like he had a lot of friends, and he felt weird just inviting himself places. It gave him a chill, and reminded him of all the times he invited himself to go to town with Oliver. 

“Sure, yeah, thanks.”

“Okay, I’ll let you know when we’re leaving.”

And with that, Kyle was gone. He went into his room and shut his door in a clear, ‘please don’t bother me until I come talk to you’ message. Elio was fine with that. He continued to his room and tried on his uniform. He looked in the mirror and groaned. He was so skinny. He hated it. He was drowning in the pants he was given, but he didn’t want to bother anyone to ask for a smaller size. He never seemed to fit into clothes that other people gave him. It seemed like a sick metaphor, he never measured up. 

Elio laid on his bed after changing back into his clothes and went back to reading his book. He had tried to bring a lot of books with him, but his mother chastised him, reminding him that there were going to be books to read in Sacramento. He acquiesced but brought a couple of books anyways. Books that reminded him of home. It turned out, home was a person. 

He brought the book by Heraclitus, a battered-up copy of Armance, and Se L’amour. Looking at all of them wracked his body with a painful nostalgia. But at least he was feeling something again. He had gone through a disgusting period of numbness, and that was finally over. It took being far away to wake up from his coma. 

He heard a knock at his door a little later. It was Kyle, he could tell by the unsure shuffling of his feet. 

“You ready, man? I have to get there a little early, ya know, cause I’m in the band.” 

“Sure, yeah. Coming.” Elio put on his shoes and walked to the door. He looked back, and thought about it for a second, and then picked up his copy of Se L’Amour. 

They piled into Kyle’s car, Elio sitting in the back. He didn’t ask, but the bass guitar was propped up on the passenger side, so he figured it would be easier to sit in the back. 

“I don’t like to listen to music before shows,” Kyle said this, seemingly unprompted, but Elio just hummed in acknowledgment. “I don’t want to, like, steal someone’s work, that’s messed up.”

Elio would never think to accuse Kyle of this, but now it seemed like maybe it was what he was the most insecure about. Like Kyle didn’t know who he was yet, so he was the amalgamation of every person he admired or liked. Elio thought this might be true for him, too. He was in no position to judge. 

They pulled up to the coffee shop, and Elio balked at how much it looked like the typical coffee shop in the movies. The wicker tables outside with ashtrays on them, the seating facing the street. He could practically see Kyle sitting at a table outside, reading The People’s History of the United States and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, drinking his coffee black. Kyle walks over to what looks like will be a stage, where the rest of the band was there. Jenna, who he met at The Deuce was there, too. 

They walk in, and there’s no one in there yet, just a girl with pink-ish hair working behind the counter. She looks up and takes a double take at Elio. It seemed like she thought he was someone else. Elio figured he might as well order coffee, since he didn’t know how long it would be until the show actually started, and he wanted something to do with himself. He walked up to the counter. 

“Hey, um, can I just have a coffee?”

“Sure! Hey, you came in here with Kyle, right?” 

“Yeah, are you guys friends?”

“No, I wish. Do you go to Xavier? I go to Immaculate Heart, and I haven’t seen you around??”

“I’m staying at Kyle’s house this semester. I’m just starting at Xavier.”

“Oh?” She looked confused. 

“Yeah, I’m doing this exchange program. I didn’t mean to apply to live in Sacramento, but it seems nice so far.”

“God, I can’t wait to get out of Sacramento. It’s incredibly boring here, just a warning. I’m Lady Bird, by the way.”

Elio didn’t know if he was allowed to laugh at this or not. He figured he should just accept it. He was too old to not accept people as they were, anyways, according to his dad. 

“Nice to meet you. I’m Elio.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hit me up if you want certain characters in this. Danny will make an appearance, for sure, and I'm not sure about who else, but stay tuned. as always, my tumblr is lilchalamet


	4. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long to update !!!

Kyle POV

Kyle looked from where he put his bass down to see if Elio was doing okay. What he saw was him shaking hands with the pink haired girl that worked behind the counter. He was pretty sure she went to Immaculate Heart, but they had never talked. Kyle didn’t understand why people his age shook hands. He was avoiding anything that felt borderline corporate for as long as he could. He wore a blazer, but that was just because it was a part of the school uniform. 

Elio looked over at him and smiled. Kyle wondered if he was going to wave. He didn’t. Kyle was relieved, but also a little disappointed. People never seemed to want to claim a connection with him in public. He shook off that feeling, the grimace that always rested on his face turning more into a frown. He decided he was going to step out for a smoke. He would ask Elio if he wanted to join, but he seemed deep in conversation with the barista. 

When Kyle walked out, he ran, literally, into Danny. It seemed like him and Danny shouldn’t get along because they were so different, but Kyle actually really liked him. 

“Shit, sorry Dan.” 

He looked really worked up, like he had been crying maybe. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Kyle owed it to him. But this was more than that. When he had found out that his dad was dying, Danny just happened to be the one that caught him when his guard was down. Danny was the one to take him out of the hallway by the arm when he was crying so hard he wasn’t making any noise. He took him outside and lit a cigarette for him, knowing it would calm him down. Danny sat with him for the rest of the day while Kyle smoked away the entire bag of tobacco he had, rolling cigarette after cigarette. Both of them nearly got detention, but Danny stepped in to make sure that didn’t happen. 

Danny just shook his head. He looked around like he was looking for someone, but in a way that seemed like maybe, he hoped they wouldn’t be there at all. Kyle didn’t know if he would accept help from him, so he decided to put on a front, for him. It wasn’t a lie because Kyle didn’t lie. Not anymore, anyway. 

“Hey, will you sit with me while I smoke this? Pre-show nerves, and all.” Danny nodded, he was good at helping people, it would take his mind off of things. Performing in front of people made him nervous as hell, but ultimately, he loved it too much for that to affect him. 

They sat in comfortable silence for a while. Danny started to tap his shoe on the ground and open his mouth like he kept wanting to say something. It was about two minutes of fish mouthing until he finally spoke, fully looking at only his shoes. 

“I’m gay.” Danny barely said it loud enough for Kyle to hear him, but he did. He had had his suspicions before, but it was never something he dwelled on very much. He had his own angst to deal with, something that took up a lot of his time. 

Kyle took a long drag of his cigarette and looked up, trying to think of the right thing to say. He just said what was on his mind. “Did something happen?” He asked it in a nonchalant tone, Danny could tell him or not. He was happy to just be there. 

“I cheated on Lady Bird.” 

“You cheated on a bird?” Kyle didn’t understand what was going on. Maybe he wasn’t smart enough to deal with this level of conversation. 

“No, a person, a girl, Lady Bird.” Kyle followed Danny’s finger pointing at the barista that was still in conversation with Elio. “The girl talking to your dopplegänger in there.” Kyle nodded. 

“His name’s Elio. He’s a foreign exchange student that’s living at my house for the semester.” Kyle was finishing his cigarette and gestured that he was standing up to go back in. Danny took the hint and stood up too. They both started walking into New Helvetia. 

“Where is he from? Does he speak English?”

“Yeah, and Italian and French it’s kind of infuriating how smart he is.”

“He speaks French?” Danny looked deep in thought. “Maybe he could give me a lesson or two.”

Kyle just rolled his eyed and laughed. He wondered if Danny was going to have a crush on his new houseguest. It wouldn’t surprise him. There was something so inherently gentle and delicate about Elio that made him both someone to take care of and intriguing. 

“Are you guys, like related at all? I know I can’t see his face from here, but god that’s terrifying.”

Kyle just shook his head. “Nah, we don’t look that similar I don’t.” Kyle walked over to Elio, and Danny followed him. The barista saw Danny, scoffed, said something to Elio that Kyle couldn’t hear, and went to the back. Danny ran his hands through his hair, did a double take in Elio’s direction and walked out of the store. 

“Hey man, we’re going on soon just so you know.” Kyle walked over to the stage that was set up. He didn’t look to see if Elio was following him. That didn’t really matter. He was in his element here. He was a celebrity. He was able to be far away from everyone but still up close.

Once they were on, they were on. Kyle loved just bouncing his head up and down to the bass line he was playing. He loved looking up through long eyelashes and strands of curly hair to make eye contact with whatever girl was in the front row. When he looked up, he saw Elio with the pink haired barista, another girl next to her, and Danny staring at him from afar. He loved feeling the energy of the crowd, feel like he wasn’t just one person anymore, that he was just in this space with noise and bodies. 

Once the show ended, he packed up his stuff and decided to look for Elio. He found him smoking outside, sitting in the opposite chair as what he would consider his “go-to” chair. It felt very serendipitous. Kyle sat down across from him, pulling out a hand-rolled cigarette. 

“Did you like the show?” 

“Yeah, you guys are good.” 

“You should play with us sometime.” Kyle didn’t know what had come over him. He was never one to invite people into his worlds, but something about Elio made him feel like he was a good person to trust. 

“That would be great!”

“Hey, who was that barista you were talking to? With the pink hair?”

“I figured you would know. She goes to Immaculate Heart, she said. Her name’s Bird Woman?”

“Lady Bird.”

“Oh, yeah, Lady Bird. She told me that she had just broken up with her boyfriend, which is why she looked so sad and was oversharing is also what she told me.”

“Interesting. Is she still in there?” Elio had a better view than Kyle did, and Kyle would rather drop dead than appear desperate. 

“Yeah.” 

“Okay, give me a second.” 

Kyle stood up and headed towards the door. He had a game plan, he was going to tell her that they were looking to play more shows at the coffee shop, and she was the perfect in because she was now friends with his very Italian, very beautiful houseguest. Oh, shit, Kyle almost turned around, but the dinging of the door slightly opening caught her attention. 

“Welcome.” Lady Bird sounded all things but welcoming, in that syrupy customer service voice. Kyle walked over and tried to think of what he was going to open with.


	5. Elio POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> does this have a plot? maybe. thanks for reading and commenting.

Elio POV

Elio was still sitting at the table when Kyle went inside to talk to Lady Bird. He wondered if that was her real name or not. It didn’t really matter, he guessed. Something about names really struck a chord with him, and then he remembered it was because Oliver had given his own name life again. 

Sitting at the table, smoking and thinking about Oliver, someone that he had seen talking to Kyle walked up and approached him. 

“Bonjour, I assume you’re the famous Elio?”

Elio laughed, this was the way his father would introduce him to his fellow professors and that made him miss home a little bit. “I suppose I am. What’s your name?”

Dany held out his hand, “Danny.” Elio was pleasantly surprised that Danny also shook hands. He didn’t realize it, but he was still thrown off by the first time he encountered Kyle and his attempt at a handshake was just used for him to stand up with. 

“Do you go to Xavier?”

“Yeah, man, I love it there.” Danny paused. “I mean, it’s been good to me, for the most part. My family really likes that I go there to get my ‘Christian education’.” Danny had used air quotes around Christian education. Elio worried that maybe this place was more religious than he was ready for. 

“Ah.”

“Sorry, are you Catholic? I’ve just gone ahead and put my foot in my mouth, haven’t I? I’m sorry.” Danny was stuttering. It was honestly a nice change of pace, as it was normally Elio that was at a loss for words. 

Elio decided to use some of what he learned from Oliver and just tell him that he was Jewish. He put his hand on the Star of David he was still wearing, and said, “I’m actually Jewish, so no worries. I was just hoping that this school isn’t too religious.”

Danny looked relieved. More than relieved, and almost too happy that he had dodged the bullet. “Oh, thank God- I mean, no offense-damn. Basically, I’m just happy I haven’t already messed up what could be a great friendship even though it feels like I’m doing that right now.” 

“Do you and Kyle hang out a lot?” Danny didn’t seem like the kind of guy that would hang out at The Deuce, but Elio figured he didn’t really know. 

“It’s complicated.” 

Elio didn’t want to pry anymore, what he really wanted to do was go to the bathroom and then go back to the Scheible house. He started to stand up, “hey man, I’m gonna use the bathroom.” 

Danny stood up, too. “I got pastry all over my hands, I have to wash them off.” 

Elio smiled. He almost felt like Danny might be hitting on him, but he didn’t think that would happen again after Oliver. Even thinking about it felt like he was cheating on Oliver, even though Oliver had essentially ended their relationship or whatever it was by getting goddamn engaged. 

He walked to the bathroom, and Danny was close behind him. When they walked in, there was someone in there, washing their hands. They were both very showy in what they had gone in there to do. Elio peed while Danny scrubbed meticulously at his hands. Finally, the other guy left. Danny turned around from the sink to face Elio. 

Elio turned from the urinal to face Danny, too. Danny’s eyes flicked down to Elio’s lips, confirming Elio’s suspicions. 

“Can I-“

Elio decided to be brave. For the first time in a long time. For the errand boy from three summers ago. He grabbed Danny by the collar and pulled him into the stall. They connected lips and made out for a couple of seconds. Then, it sounded like someone was coming in, and they split up. 

It was Kyle. “Hello, boys.” Elio didn’t know if he knew anything about Danny, but he didn’t know if he was ready for him to know everything about him. Elio didn’t even know what he knew about himself. “Elio, you ready to get fuckin’ out of here?” 

Elio nodded. 

“Oh, did I interrupt? Damn, Danny, quick with the rebound are you?” Kyle asked the question in the way that sounded like he didn’t really care if he got an answer or not. So Kyle knew that Danny was gay, or at least bi. 

They all walked out of the bathroom, and Danny walked away, nodding towards the exit. He was going to walk home. Kyle and Elio walked towards the car and got in. It seemed like whatever Kyle did or didn’t see was something that broke the ice. He didn’t know why, but he had a feeling that it was something to do with Lady Bird. Elio wondered if there was a past there, but it wasn’t something he was going to worry about. 

Elio was mostly worried about what he was going to do about the Danny thing. He was good at discretion, it was practically his middle name. He was good at keeping things from people, sometimes even himself.  
They got back to the house, and before they walked in, Kyle put a hand on Elio’s chest. “Wanna smoke before we go inside?”

Elio nodded, it was beginning to seem like Kyle asked someone to smoke with him whenever there was something on his mind that he wanted to talk about. Elio was fine with him using this as a crutch. He didn’t mind having another cigarette to think. 

“He’s gay, you know.” 

“I do now.” 

“People don’t know.” 

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“Didn’t think you would.” Kyle’s sentences were getting shorter. It was clear that just like the cigarette, this conversation was coming to an end. 

Elio zipped his lips with his finger as a promise. He stubbed out the cigarette and walked inside. He went to go lay down for a little while. He was so tired. There was something about the breaking of tension that really wore him out. He remembered that he used to go from Marzia to Oliver like it was nothing. That made him feel much older. He didn’t feel as young as he was just the last summer. He didn’t feel like he could hop around anymore. 

He drifted off without realizing it and woke up to someone knocking on the door. It was Kyle’s mom. 

“Hi honey, you have a call!” 

Elio jumped up, he didn’t want to cost the family too much with the long-distance call. “Thank you, I’ll keep it short with long-distance and everything!”

“Oh hun, don’t worry! It’s not long distance.”

Elio was confused. He didn’t think that his family would be in the states. He decided that maybe it was a wrong number, even though that didn’t make any sense. 

He picked up the phone, and after thinking about who it could be, started to talk. “Hello?”

“Good, I had the right number.”

Elio would recognize that voice anywhere. Luckily, there was a chair right next to him, because he had to sit down. “Oliver?”

He didn’t have to ask. He knew. But he wanted to make sure. 

“Yes. Your father told me that you were studying in California, and I asked for your phone number right away.”

“I never thought I would hear your voice again.” 

“I could say the same thing.”

“Wait,” Elio looked at his watch. “Aren’t you supposed to be on your honeymoon? Like right now?”

“You don’t go on honeymoons if you don’t get married, Elio.”

“What?”

“Listen, I have to go, but I wanted to talk to you. Will you take down my number so that you can call me?”

Elio nodded, forgetting he was on the phone. “Yes, please.” 

Elio took down his number and held the paper to his face. He smiled into it, blissfully happy that he had a connection to Oliver that was real again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be in the states after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you hate the kiss, listen, sorry, but it feels realistic to me. 
> 
> much love, and my tumblr is @/lilchalamet


	6. Kyle POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we're out here, developing plot

Kyle POV

“He’s gay, you know.” Kyle wanted to test the waters. He had no idea what kind of response he would get from Elio, but judging by what he assumed was happening in the bathroom right before he walked in, things would be fine. 

“I do now.” Damnit. Elio was giving him literally nothing to go on. 

“People don’t know.” Kyle wanted so, so badly to trust Elio. He also didn’t know if he could handle being the only person carrying around this burden. 

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“Didn’t think you would.” Kyle was lying. He was lying through his teeth, and he was fine with it. He wasn’t feeling the normal post-show high that he was used to, and he really just wanted to lay down for a while. 

He stubbed out his cigarette, and before he could exchange any more pleasantries with Elio, he walked inside and closed his bedroom door. His mom hated when he did this, but he needed the barrier. He was angry. He was so angry and he didn’t know what to do with all of it. What was normally post-show celebration was blinding rage. It couldn’t be jealousy, that didn’t make any sense. 

He heard his mom knocking on Elio’s door after the phone rang. He hoped that maybe it was Lady Bird calling him, but then he remembered that she gave him her number, and not the other way around. Whoever Elio was talking to, he was talking to them in English, which it seemed like he almost never did, and it didn’t seem like it was his parents. 

“Shouldn’t you be on your honeymoon?” Kyle was confused. At first, it had seemed like Elio was talking to someone that was maybe the love of his life. Kyle wondered if they were doing long distance and then remembered that he had literally seen the tail end of him playing tonsil hockey with Danny so that probably wasn’t what was happening. 

He heard Elio end the call after writing down the mysterious caller’s number and he dove back onto his bed to look casual when Elio walked by. He didn’t think that Elio would even look into his room, but he had to make sure that he didn’t look like he was eavesdropping. 

If Elio looked in the room, he didn’t look for very long. He was holding a post-it note like it was the most precious thing in the entire world. Kyle wished that someone’s number could mean that much to him. Maybe he didn’t, actually. He was not too happy with the idea of a person holding that much of Kyle’s well-being in their hands. Kyle went back to reading, wondering what boring bullshit his mom was going to serve for dinner. It was always the same shit, and he was tired of seeing his dad struggle to keep food down and his mom try so hard to pretend not to notice. This was the main reason that he was glad that Elio was there. There was something else to think about other than his dad rapidly dying and losing his will to keep going. Now, there was a new toy, a foreign boy that would be polite and always offer to take the dishes to the kitchen and wouldn’t stare at his dad because he was being polite but would still try to engage him in conversation. 

Dinner went exactly as Kyle thought it would. Elio being so nice and so talkative, and Kyle sitting there, shifting peas around like it was his job. He detested and loved how similar his table manners were to his father’s. They were both stoic, angry, and fucking hated peas. The meal ended, and Kyle made no moves to help clear the table. It had been seventeen years of his mom refusing to let guests help and he wasn’t about to start being some kind of stand-up citizen now. 

“Thank you so much for dinner, Mrs. Scheible. The peas were great as always.” Elio was saying this as he was walking some plates to the kitchen. God damn it Kyle was angry. Where did Elio get off being such a good person? Kyle wanted to find out his ulterior motives, and he would do it if it killed him. 

He wanted to let Elio get comfortable in his room. He wanted to know what Elio would do in his room when he was relaxing. He hated not knowing what people were really thinking about. On the flipside, he hated anyone having any insight into his thoughts. Elio’s thoughts pretty much played out on his face, and that struck Kyle as a huge weakness. One that he would absolutely use against him. 

Kyle shook out his hair and stood up from his bed a couple minutes after he heard Elio close the door of his room. He decided whether or not he was going to knock. Trying to decide which would be the better entrance. In the end, he didn’t do anything, because Elio was at the door. He looked sorry for something. Kyle rolled his eyes. 

“Sorry, I was just going to get water-“ 

“Why are you here?” That wasn’t what Kyle had planned on opening with, but it had come out, and he decided to own it. 

“I don’t understand.” His face was twitching. It nearly broke Kyle’s resolve. Elio’s scrunched up nose was enough to break the toughest interrogators. 

“Why. Are. You. Here?” Every word was punctuated with a poke to the chest. Elio was smaller than him, so they were pushing him into his room. 

“I can’t exactly leave, can I?” Kyle didn’t expect him to be angry back, but that is what he wanted, he realized. 

“Are you gay or something?” A switch of topic. Kyle wanted to move away from whatever Elio’s idea of home was. He didn’t have one, not at this house anyway. 

Elio just rolled his eyes and shrugged. Kyle shook his head. That wasn’t enough. 

“You kissed Danny, didn’t you? You kissed him to be able to have dirt on someone when you start school, didn’t you?” Kyle didn’t believe this at all, but he was digging himself deeper and deeper. 

“Why would I do that?” 

“Why did you kiss him?” 

“Why do you kiss anyone?” 

“Stop. That.” More shoves to the bony chest. Elio was fully leaning against the bed now, and just gave in and sat down. 

“What?” Elio looked up at him, and fuck if he didn’t have the best eyelashes Kyle had ever seen. 

“Prove it.”  
“I don’t know what you want, Kyle. You are the most confusing goddamn-“

Kyle didn’t know what came over him, but he needed Elio to shut up. He had a feeling that Elio knew him better than anyone else did, and the only thing he could think of doing was kissing him. It was not the response he expected, but it was what happened. 

Elio didn’t kiss him back. He wasn’t not kissing him back, but it was the lack of anything that hurt more. Kyle broke it off. “I get it, I’m not pretty enough for you. I’m not talented and theatrical.” 

Elio shook his head. “Why did you do that? You don’t like me.”

Kyle didn’t want to admit that. He didn’t want to think that there could be deeper reasons that he was angry at Elio, angry at Danny, angry at goddamn Bird Lady for getting into his head with her pink hair and handshakes. 

“Please.” It was one word that said ‘please just kiss me again’ or ‘please don’t tell anyone about this’ or ‘tell me why I did this’ or ‘don’t think about this too much, it would kill me if you knew what was going on in my head’. 

Elio didn’t say anything. There were small miracles, sometimes. He pulled Kyle over to him and kissed him, not the angry kiss that Kyle was hoping for, but something much more subdued. Kyle was not a fan of this intimacy. He wanted to get out. He had to. He wanted more though, that was the problem. He wanted what wasn’t there. He kissed Elio one more time, just to see if anything changed. It didn’t. 

He stood up. “Listen, I’m sorry, okay?” Kyle scratched the back of his neck. He noticed that Elio did the same thing when he was nervous. He hated that he noticed so much about Elio. He wished he didn’t care. 

Elio did the same lip zipping he had done in regards to Danny. Elio was going to kill Kyle, he just knew it. 

“Hey, we better get some rest, yeah? Big day tomorrow.” Kyle was nervous to have everyone meet Elio, officially. He wanted to keep Elio for himself, but the semester was going to start, and they had to go to school. It was literally the reason that Elio was even there. 

On his way out, he poked his head back in the room. “That person that called you? I didn’t realize you had friends in the United States.”

Elio shrugged. “I have some family here, my parents were bugging them to call me to make sure I was still alive. I’m sure you get it.” Kyle narrowed his eyes. He fucking hated being lied to, and he knew he was being lied to. To his damn face. Something about it made him feel like it was more complicated than that, though. He let it slide.  
“See you in the morning. I don’t like to get to school early, but we can go early tomorrow so you don’t get lost.” A lie for a lie. Kyle loved getting to school early. He loved sitting in the parking lot on the trunk of his car and watching people. He loved being so close to everything and still on the outskirts. He hoped that him pretending to do something for Elio was enough of an olive branch, for now. He supposed he would find out if his world came crashing down when school started. 

As Kyle walked out, he saw the post-it note on Elio’s desk. It had a phone number written on it, so that checked out. Elio wasn’t facing him, so he could look closer and see what it said. 

“Oliver <3” 

Traitor. Traitor. Traitor. He was being lied to, and Elio was in love with this Oliver guy. He put it all together, and he wanted to kick himself. He didn’t want to say anything, he really didn’t plan on it, either. 

“Oliver.”

Elio sprung up like something shocked him. “What?” A terrible attempt at remaining calm. 

“Oh nothing, sorry, I was just remembering the name of my teacher that I couldn’t stand.” Another lie to add to the pile, and a really bad one at that. 

“Oh, sure. Hey, I’m going to bed if you don’t mind.” 

“No, not at all. See you tomorrow.” Nothing was worse than saying goodbye more than once. Kyle rushed out, thankful that he had a reason to leave other than the incredible awkwardness. 

Kyle laid down in his room and tried to think of other things. He tried to think about how loose he was going to tie his tie. He fucking hated wearing it, the capitalist noose, and he liked to test how loosely he could wear it before he got in trouble. Elio would probably look great in a tie. If he was Christian, he would have been a great altar boy, probably. 

The problem was when he closed his eyes, he saw something that he never expected to see: Danny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> people asked me for this, and i don't know if it's any good at all. i might have lost every person that even kind of liked this because of this move, so sorry if that's true. 
> 
> as always, yell at me on tumblr @/lilchalamet


	7. Elio POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elio and Kyle go to school for the first day.

Elio was laying in his bed after talking to Oliver. He thought about that again. He was talking to Oliver. He never thought that he would ever talk to him again, but yet, here it was, they had talked and he had a number for Oliver in the states. Now, Oliver wasn’t just in his past anymore. Oliver was seven digits away. Oliver was a real person that existed in his presence and he wasn’t married and he wanted to talk to Elio. He didn’t know that Oliver would ever want to talk to him again. 

Elio needed to get up and move. He needed to do something with all the energy he had thinking about Oliver. He figured his best excuse was that he wanted water. He had used this excuse before in the villa when he wanted to leave and go out at night in case Mafalda caught him. 

He went to his door and as he opened it, he was met with a face full of Kyle. A Kyle that looked angry. It was nice to see any emotion on Kyle’s face because he was normally so stone cold. 

“Sorry, I’m just going to get water.” The first time he didn’t stutter. He had used this lie a lot of times. 

“Why are you here?” 

“I don’t understand.” Elio felt his face twitching and he hated that he gave himself away so much. 

“Why. Are. You. Here?” Kyle was punctuating every word with a poke to Elio’s chest. Elio was much smaller than Kyle and was being pushed into his room. 

Elio mustered up all the anger he didn’t have and spoke with as much conviction as he could. “I can’t exactly leave, can I?” Kyle looked pleased with this response. This just confused Elio more. 

“Are you gay or something?” Elio balked. No one had ever asked him this up front. He didn’t really know what he was, but it was interesting that someone had the guts to ask him. If Elio was being honest, it kind of turned him on. He tried to not get concerned that he was probably flirting with his doppelgänger. 

Elio decided he didn’t want to give Kyle the response that he knew Kyle wanted. Kyle wanted Elio to make him feel better. Elio didn’t feel like giving that to him, so he shrugged. 

“You kissed Danny, didn’t you? You kissed him to be able to have dirt on someone when you start school, didn’t you?” Elio wanted to cry. Everyone in the entire goddamn world seemed to think he had bad motives. Everyone seemed to think that whatever he was doing was in order to throw them under the bus. 

“Why would I do that?” It was a genuine answer. Everything Kyle was doing was stressful and confusing. He didn’t have the energy to understand what was going on. 

“Why did you kiss him?”

“Why do you kiss anyone?” Elio was challenging him now. He wanted to scare Kyle as much as Kyle was trying to intimidate him. 

Kyle shoved him back to the corner of the room, onto his bed. “Stop. That.” 

Elio was laying back on the bed and looked up through his eyelashes at Kyle. It was Elio’s best move. “What?” He could tell that Kyle was affected by this. Finally, Elio had the upper-hand, even though he was laying on the bed. 

“Prove it.”

Elio wondered what this meant. He was getting angry. The anger from Kyle was rubbing off on him. 

“I don’t know what you want, Kyle. You are the most confusing goddamn-” If Kyle’s house was more like the villa and bigger, Elio would be yelling. But there was no time to yell because suddenly, Kyle had jumped on him and was kissing him. 

It had been a while since anyone had kissed Elio, it was since Rome, actually, so he wasn’t quite kissing Kyle back. It was a lot to go from kissing Danny to talking to Oliver on the phone to kissing Kyle. Well, he wasn’t kissing Kyle anymore, because Kyle had pulled away. 

“I get it, I’m not pretty enough for you. I’m not talented and theatrical.” 

Elio had never heard him sound so sad. “Why did you do that? You don’t like me.” Elio didn’t think that anyone had ever liked him. Not really, actually. He thought that maybe Marzia liked him. Or maybe Oliver. But Oliver was meant to get married, so clearly, he didn’t really ever care about Elio. No one ever cared about Elio, but himself. 

“Please.”

Elio responded to this without words. He pulled Kyle back from where he was sitting far away on the bed and kissed him. For the first time, Elio was in control of this kiss. It was soft, softer than what Kyle wanted, and he could tell. 

Kyle kissed him again and then said, He stood up. “Listen, I’m sorry, okay?” 

Kyle stood up and nervously paced around the room. It was nice to know that he wasn’t the only one that was wigged out. Elio was nervous as hell for his first day of school. When Elio was almost out the door, he looked down and saw the note with Oliver’s name on it. Right away, Elio was kicking himself for drawing that fucking heart on the page. He couldn’t believe he was so dumb to be so transparent. 

“I didn’t know you had people in the states?” Phew. Maybe Kyle didn’t actually see the note and had just overheard the phone call. Maybe Kyle was even jealous. Elio was thrilled at this new possibility. But, he decided to lie, because he didn’t know what was going on with him and Oliver, anyway. It was probably nothing, but acknowledging that was putting a stop to any hope, and he wasn’t ready for that. It was the Schrodinger’s cat of lies. 

“I have some family here my parents were bugging them to call me to make sure I was still alive. I’m sure you get it.” Elio was pointed, but he would have answered if he was pressed. 

Kyle laughed and nodded. As he walked out, he told Elio he liked being on time to school. Oh right, that was tomorrow. Elio nodded at him in acknowledgment and went about pretending to get ready for bed. Kyle paused by the desk that had the number on it and looked more closely. Elio knew that if he hadn’t seen it before, he had certainly seen the heart now. Shit. 

Elio didn’t know if he was going to be able to fall asleep. He didn’t think it was going to be possible. He looked at his watch. It was 1 am in New York. That was the only thing holding him back from calling Oliver. He wanted to talk to him under the guise of “what do American students do” even though he had gone to school in America, he just needed a familiar voice that was his supporter. Instead, he replayed every conversation they had ever had. That would be enough, for now. 

Eventually, he did find sleep. He woke up to the commotion and rubbed his eyes. He was awake earlier than he had to be. He put on his uniform, saying a silent prayer of thanks that he didn’t have to figure out what to wear, and walked towards the bathroom. He saw Kyle’s mother preparing breakfast and what maybe was lunch, and Kyle’s dad, in the same chair that he was always in. 

“Good morning, Mrs. Scheible!” He still didn’t trust himself to call her anything other than that. She didn’t like that he was so hell-bent on addressing her as such, but it was something that she would eventually get used to. It reminded Elio of Oliver calling his dad ‘pro’. His dad hated it so much, but they all loved Oliver so much that eventually, it just sounded natural. 

On the way back from the bathroom, he bumped into Kyle with his uniform on, but askew. His tie was undone and his shirt wasn’t buttoned correctly. Elio stopped him in the narrow hallway. He looked really stressed like he hadn’t slept at all. Elio was only a little annoyed, it should have been him that was stressed and without sleep, but he felt bad for Kyle. 

“Hang on.” Elio started fixing Kyle’s buttons. 

Kyle shoved Elio’s hand away. “We’re going to be late, come on.” 

Elio was confused; school didn’t start for another hour, but he was going to let it slide. He wanted to smoke a cigarette and he figured that he would be able to if he got to school early. Kyle didn’t smoke in the car, but they would have time to kill. Maybe it would make Elio look cooler than he was if he smoked outside school like he didn’t care what people thought about him at all. 

They drove to school, and Kyle put on NPR. Elio rolled his eyes. He was tired of Kyle putting on this weird show, especially when it was only the two of them. They had kissed and fought so it seemed like all the boundaries between them should have been down. 

They got to school thirty minutes before mass. Kyle had not fixed his tie, and it was still loose around his neck. Elio tried to tell him about it when they were getting out of the car.

“Hey, Kyle, your tie-“

Kyle turned to him with a manic look on his face, tightening the tie as much as possible. “Oh, you mean this noose? Happy? I didn’t know you were like them.”

Elio all of a sudden felt as though he had to defend himself as not being a part of this unknown ‘them’ but Jenna and her boyfriend walked up, saving the day. Kyle paid attention to them while Elio lit a cigarette and walked away with his backpack. He was determined to not have a miserable day, and that required being away from Kyle. Once he finished his cigarette, he went into the front office, he still needed his schedule. He hated not knowing where anything was, it was a huge burden on him. When he walked into the office, he saw Danny. Danny was working at the front desk. 

This made Elio more confident, and he strode up to the front. “Morning, Danny.” Elio had learned to be this casual around people he had done things with from Oliver. He wasn’t very good at it yet, but he was working on it. He figured it would come easier with Kyle out of anyone, but he might as well practice with Danny. 

“Hi, Elio.” Danny looked down at his hands when he talked to Elio. If Elio had any self-esteem to rub together, he would think that Danny was blushing because of him. He figured this couldn’t be the case. “Here’s your schedule, I’m assuming that’s why you’re here so early. We have mass first thing, and then we have homeroom. Ah, we have the same homeroom! I can just show you to where it is after mass if you want that, I mean I don’t have to-“

“That would be great.” Elio cut Danny off. He had been in this position before, and he didn’t want to let Danny ramble like a runaway train. He had a feeling that nothing would come out of him and Danny, but he wanted to be at least friends with him. Of course, he didn’t know for sure, but he didn’t know if he could ever be with anyone and not think about how close Oliver was. 

Elio nodded at him and started walking out. “We sit by last name, just so you know,” Danny shouted at him on his way out. Elio nodded at this. 

Mass. Elio wasn’t fully Jewish, but he certainly wasn’t going to mass every day. This was going to be new for him. He didn’t know what to do with his lanky body in the pews, and he was nowhere near anyone he knew. He saw some familiar faces. Jenna was sitting a couple of people away from Bird Woman, and Danny was reading from the Bible in the front. Kyle was fucking around with Jonah Ruiz. There was a lot more sitting down and standing up than he was prepared for. It was really a workout. Then, they had to go up and eat the communion wafers. Elio just nodded fast to make it look like he knew what the fuck was going on. He craned his neck to see what people in front of him were doing. He had to do this ritual before he could see what Kyle did. He was almost next to Bird Woman though and decided to say something. 

“Bird- Lady Bird! Hey!” 

Lady Bird looked back at him, and then looked a little sad, almost like she was expecting someone else. “You know what? You and Kyle have very similar voices. I mean- maybe not, I don’t know Kyle that well.”

Ah. So, Lady Bird had the hots for Kyle. That made sense. It was probably why she was giving Elio any attention, because of their resemblance. That just made him feel even weirder about kissing Kyle. It was almost like kissing a mirror. Things were getting messy. He didn’t realize that Marzia wasn’t lying when she said that people were fucking all the time at Catholic school. It was because it was the ‘forbidden fruit’. This made her laugh so hard she cried. A lot of things did, which explained her abs of steel. Elio was distracted and a cough broke him from his train of thought and directed him to the wafers. When he was done with that and started to count down the number of times he would have to do that again, he heard someone call his name. It was Danny. 

“Hey, Elio! Let’s get you to homeroom, yeah? Do you know the pledge of allegiance? We’re going to have to do that soon, so I can help you if you need it.”

Elio didn’t want to break it to him that he had gone to school in America for most of his life, so he just nodded. “That would be great, Danny, thanks.”

They walked into homeroom together. So far, he was not dying, but things weren’t exactly going smoothly at this new school. Then, classes went by quickly and it was the time that Elio was dreading the most: lunchtime. 

He had no idea where he was going to sit. He figured he could find Danny or Kyle. Kyle didn’t seem like the kind of person that ate with a group, or frankly ate at all. He seemed like he was on a cigarette and self-loathing diet. Nevertheless, he saw Kyle first, with Jonah Ruiz and some other guys. He wandered over with the lunch that Kyle’s mom had packed for him that morning. Elio noticed that Kyle wasn’t eating his and had bought food from the cafeteria, but he decided not to say anything. 

Kyle introduced him to everyone. Literally. “Everyone, this is my exchange student, Elio. Everyone, this is Elio.” Elio got a lot of grunts in his direction. That was one thing he would learn to love about teenage boys, especially American ones: talking in full words was almost never necessary. It also explained a lot of Oliver’s behavior. 

Finally, the day was over. Kyle and Elio drove home, in comfortable silence. Luckily, they were listening to music instead of NPR, Elio didn’t know if he could take any more learning that day. He was mostly tired from trying to learn how shit worked at this new school. 

When they got home, he wanted to go straight to his room. Kyle followed him. He started to ask him what he was doing, and Kyle pushed him against his door and kissed him. Then punched the door behind him. 

“Nothing. Damnit. Fucking shit.” 

Elio had no idea what was going on. Kyle just left, shaking out his hand. Elio started a mental countdown of how much longer he was going to have to be in Sacramento.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmk if you like this seeing the same scene from both POVs. it felt necessary for this case, but idk if i'll continue. 
> 
> tumblr to send complaints: @/lilchalamet
> 
> **also this is the scene i was referencing (from RAW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veEPz-nB-_Q


	8. Kyle POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are coming to a head.

Kyle thought that if he just planted on one Elio it would fix all of his problems. He would figure out if he actually liked Elio or not, and then all would be well. The only problem with this was that it didn’t give him anything. Not a single thing. 

Kyle’s mother came to knock on his door mid-crisis. He opened the door to her holding a phone. “Mom?”

“Do you think that Elio would like having a phone in his room? I feel bad that he has to talk to his family in the kitchen. I feel like he could use some privacy. He’s a long way from home, you know.”

Kyle thought about “Oliver <3” and what kind of conversations they would be having in private if he was so happy to hear from him. He shook his head. He had to twist this so it would be believable. “If he gets a phone in his room, I should too.”

“This one is the one I was going to give to you, Kyle. That’s why I’m holding a phone. You should give him a break, you know. He’s a long way from home.”

“Everyone at school already loves him. He’s a snake, mom.”

“He’s a nice boy, Kyle and you know that.”

Kyle did know that. He was nice, and he was considerate and he had gentle eyes and he did this thing with his head when he was confused and tilted it to the side. Kyle didn’t feel like justifying that with an answer. 

“I’m giving him a phone, Kyle. Try to be a friend to him.”

Kyle rolled his eyes. She went to knock on Elio’s door and tell him about the phone. She might as well have given him a private phone line, and Kyle was ticked off. He shrugged on a jacket and untied his tie and went outside to smoke. His mother hated when he smoked in his uniform, so he tried not to. 

Kyle was smoking and thinking about Danny. He wanted to be smoking and thinking about Lady Bird. He really liked the idea of Lady Bird, but she was not in the same circles as he was. It would have taken a lot of work to integrate her into his circle. While he was smoking, he thought he should talk to Elio about letting him into their circle for classes and lunch. When Kyle walked back in, he started heading towards Elio’s room. This walk left a weird taste in his mouth, after what happened last night. 

Before he could knock on the door, he heard Elio’s voice talking. Kyle was pretty sure that he wasn’t talking to himself because that was a level of crazy he wasn’t prepared to deal with. Then he realized: Elio was already using the phone that his mother had just given him. That didn’t take very long. Elio sounded too happy on the phone. Kyle decided to try to listen in. He was happy that their bedrooms shared a wall. He stopped in the kitchen and grabbed a glass from the cabinet. 

Kyle went into his room and put the glass against the wall. It wasn’t perfect, but it was doing something. He heard snippets, but it was enough to make him jealous. Kyle would never admit that he was jealous because he wasn’t prepared to admit that he cared about anything. 

“I miss you too…”

Kyle scoffed. He didn’t know if anyone had ever missed him. He wanted to keep it that way. He wondered if maybe his father would miss him when he died, but it was hard to say if he was going to be able to do anything when he died. Kyle didn’t suspect so. 

“…to California?”

No. This could not be happening. If Elio’s “Oliver <3” came to visit Elio that would mean that he would have to face this. That he was never anyone’s first choice. He wasn’t Elio’s, he knew that. He certainly wasn’t Bird Woman’s first choice, and he didn’t even allow himself to think that he was a choice of Danny’s at all. Kyle’s batting percentage was not going great. He wanted to pursue Bird Woman, but he didn’t have a good feeling about it. 

“nice…looks like me a little, … Kyle…”

Kyle dropped the glass when he heard Elio say his name. He was confused. Luckily, it fell onto his bed that he was kneeling on. If this person was a romantic interest, why was Elio telling this guy about him? Surely, he would want to keep things separate. Kyle had a penchant for keeping things apart in his life. Like one of those plates that are carved out into sections. His curiosity was killing him, and he lifted the glass again, seemingly at the end of their conversation. 

“…bird…and a lady?...ok let me know when…bye!”

Kyle heard Elio hang up the phone. He wanted to talk to him about it, because it wasn’t like they had more than one phone line. He strode over to the door, which was always a shorter walk when he was angry. He decided that he was going to knock on Elio’s door. Just go for it and knock. 

He knocked. He knocked a lot louder than he had to. He got a casual and muffled “come in.” Kyle walked in and felt bold. He felt bold until he saw that it looked like Elio had been crying. He dropped any intention of kissing him to figure his shit out because he didn’t want to do that to Elio. Not right now, at least. 

“Hey, are you okay?”

Elio made an obvious attempt to clear his throat to not sound like he had been crying. “Yeah, I’m fine, just a long day, you know? A lot of stuff to figure out.”

“It seemed like everyone at school already likes you.”

Elio just shook his head. “No way, they don’t even know me.”

“They don’t know me, either.” Kyle didn’t expect that to come out of his mouth, but, for all intents and purposes, it was true. He was jealous of Elio, he realized. It wasn’t his most astute observation, but it was a scary one. He was jealous that these people he had known his whole life in school were wary of him because they didn’t know him but loved Elio for the same reason. It just didn’t seem fair. 

“They know you. They know you play bass, that you like to get to school early so you can smoke, that you are a good friend but you try to keep that a secret for some reason. I could go on?” Elio looked at Kyle. Kyle was shocked. “You work really hard in school, but for some reason hate the idea of people thinking that? You go to parties because you feel like you have to, and everything you do is to make your dad happy.”

Kyle didn’t want someone to know him this well. He needed to get out of there, he needed to run. He didn’t care about the fact that he was worried about Elio anymore, he was worried about his façade going away. He was worried about one thing and that was Kyle. He just shook his head. “You don’t know me, okay? So don’t act like you can come in here and save me. Just because you are observant and know some shit about my life doesn’t mean that you are the answer to my prayers. If I had prayed for a solution it wouldn’t have come in some Italian version of myself, it would have come in a cure for my dad’s cancer. Don’t be an idiot.”

By the end of that, Kyle was screaming. His mother had come outside the door to see if there was anything she could do. He knew that she was there because she never just came in. She would always linger outside until she felt she really should intervene. She wasn’t a very hands-on mom. But, when Elio had arrived, all of a sudden, she was all about packing them lunch and ironing their uniforms. It was infuriating. “You can go, mom, we’re fine.” 

“I’m sorry, okay? You can talk to me, you know. I’ll be out of your hair before you know it, and you can go back to living your fucking miserable life.” 

“Fuck. You.” That was punctuated by a shove to Elio and a hasty walk out of the room. He didn’t want to kiss Elio if he had just talked to this Oliver guy on the phone. He was angry and didn’t know what to do. He remembered he had Lady Bird’s number and decided he would give her a call. 

The phone didn’t ring for very long, and a man’s voice answered. Maybe not a man, but a young guy. It wasn’t Lady Bird, that was for sure. “MacPherson residence.”

“Hey, man, is Lady Bird around?”

“Hang on.” Kyle heard this guy put his hand on the phone and scream through the house. “Lady Bird! You have a phone call!”

Kyle heard a voice that was muffled but it sounded something like, “who is it?”

Kyle stepped in before the person that picked up could ask. He didn’t want to give the person too much information and wanted to just say as little as possible. “It’s Kyle. I go to school with Lady Bird.”

“You’re not a girl.”

“Duh, I go to Xavier. Can she talk or not?”

“She’s on her way, man, chill. I was just messing with you.” 

Kyle heard footsteps and the phone changing hands. He was glad that she didn’t have a cell phone. It was refreshing. “Hi, Lady Bird. I was wondering if you wanted to hang out.” Kyle didn’t like to have long phone conversations. He didn’t trust that he wasn’t being listened to by the powers that be. 

“We can hang out after my shift at the coffee shop if you want. I’m off at 5 tomorrow.”

Kyle was surprised that this was going so well. He liked to think that he was fairly likable, but he wasn’t exactly the kind of person that people were clamoring to hang out with. He was willing to take this win. He probably would have been at the coffee shop anyway, because he liked how he felt when he was there. He felt like he was a part of something without having to interact with anyone. Sure, he was interacting with the economy, but that was something he was willing to do to have a safe space. “Okay, perfect, I-”

“Could you bring Eliot?” She said that fast. Like ever since he asked her if she wanted to hang out that was something she was planning on saying. He didn’t care for that and he was angry. He was mostly angry at Elio because somehow, he had managed to break the hearts of two and a half people in the week he had been in town. He wasn’t willing to count himself as an entire person. He also wasn’t sure if he should count Lady Bird though, because she didn’t even know his name. 

That being said, he felt justified when he pointedly said on the phone, “his name is Elio, first of all, and second of all, he’s gay so give up now.” Kyle was really glad that he had a phone in his room. He could say whatever he wanted and not worry about anyone eavesdropping. It was like he had forgotten that earlier that day he had been listening through the wall to Elio’s conversation. This inspired him to keep going. “He kissed Danny, you know. I don’t know why you like him so much. You just met him.”

There was a long pause. Kyle felt justified in his rant, but he thought he might have ruined his chances with Lady Bird, even though he was probably helping her in the end. 

“Don’t tell anyone else about that, okay, Kyle? I’m serious. Bring Elio tomorrow or I won’t hang out with you. I have to go my mom needs the phone. Bye.”

Kyle said goodbye to a dial tone. Then, a familiar feeling sank in his stomach. He hated wanting to be valid for people, and more than anything, he hated that he wanted people to like him. He always let them down, which is why the only person he tried to really impress was his dad. He figured he might as well try because it was hard to disappoint someone that was dying. 

When he walked through the house to go outside and smoke, he heard Elio talking to his mother. They both sounded happy. He grimaced. He didn’t want to hear what they were talking about, but it was kind of hard to avoid. 

“Of course, you can have your friend come and visit us, Elio! We would love to meet Oliver and we want you to feel at home here.”

“Thank you so much, he won’t be much trouble, don’t worry. He’ll be coming in next week if that’s ok? He found a cheap flight.”

“Sounds perfect.”

Kyle slammed the door shut. He was going to meet the famous “Oliver <3” and he only had a week to prepare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading this crazy story, send me messages on tumblr if you want @/lilchalamet 
> 
> thanks for comments and kudos, they mean more than y'all know!!


	9. Elio POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver arrives in Sacramento.

Elio had a week to prepare. Elio had a week to prepare before he was going to see Oliver again. He was going to see Oliver again in the states and he was nowhere near ready for that. When he had talked to Oliver on the phone in his room he couldn’t believe how well the conversation went. He didn’t plan at all how it was going to go, but the conversation was easy. It was like they were talking about Haydn all over again. 

Oliver had said that he missed him first. Well, he didn’t really say it in so many words, but it was enough to make Elio say “I miss you too,” and that felt like enough. He didn’t know what else to say, so he talked about the people he was meeting. He wanted him to know about Lady Bird because she was special, and seemed like a person that Oliver would get along with. He decided not to tell him anything about Kyle in terms of what happened between them, because he didn’t want to upset Oliver. Even though he knew that Oliver was getting married, he didn’t want to assume that this meant they would be able to be able to fall back into step. 

He didn’t know what he was thinking when he asked Oliver if he had ever been to California. It seemed like an innocent question, but really it wasn’t. It was a loud plea for him to want to visit Elio. Elio wasn’t lonely, per say, but he could use someone that really knew him. He was used to being happy spending time alone, but for some reason, doing that in this house felt worse than it did in the villa. When Oliver said that he had never been and wanted to visit, it took Elio by surprise. He told Elio that they had fall break in the next week and he would love to see him and see where he’s staying. It took everything that Elio had not to drop the phone. He was going to see Oliver in a week. He didn’t think he would ever sleep again, but luckily, he could sleep in because it was finally the weekend. 

He woke up earlier than he expected because someone was knocking on his door. He rubbed his eyes and considered putting a shirt on but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. He opened the door to see Kyle fully dressed and ready to go somewhere. 

“Morning?”

Kyle took a second to notice that Elio wasn’t wearing a shirt. He seemed to struggle with forming a sentence. “Listen, let’s go to New Helvetia, I have homework to do and you probably do too or you could read or whatever.” 

Elio didn’t understand why he was being invited. Kyle seemed like the kind of person that liked to do things alone. Mostly because he told Elio he was the kind of person that liked to do things alone. Elio could respect that, and he was trying to, but it wasn’t going to work if Kyle kept inviting him to things. 

“You want me to come with you?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“You know you don’t have to invite me places, right? Just because I’m staying at your house doesn’t mean you have to feel obligated to hang out with me.” Elio felt like he was coming full circle. When he was in the villa he would have died to spend time with Oliver, but Oliver didn’t feel any obligation to spend time with him. Now, it was Kyle feeling a weird obligation. 

“Listen, don’t make this weird, but I asked Lady Bird to hang out and she told me that she would only hang out with me if you were there.”

“What? Why?” 

“Beats me! I told her she was barking up the wrong tree with you being gay and all but she insisted.”

Elio put a hand to his forehead. He didn’t understand what motivated Kyle to do the things that he did. He would come to the precipice of understanding and be on the same page as him and then all of a sudden, some douchebag moves he pulled would push him right back. 

“You what? God Kyle.” 

“I panicked, okay? I really like her.”

Elio was feeling brave. Brave enough to call Kyle out on his bullshit that he normally would have just accepted. “I don’t think you do. Also, why would I help you when you pull shit like this?”

“Because I’ll owe you.”

“Oh?”

“When your ‘Oliver’ comes next week, I’ll leave you alone for the whole time he’s here. I won’t be in your way at all.”

Elio rolled his eyes at the way Kyle put air quotes around Oliver’s name. It was probably his own fault though because his dramatic ass did put a heart next to Oliver’s name. It made sense that Kyle thought he would want or need some alone time with Oliver. Or, a lot of alone time it seemed. 

“You know what? Fine. I’ll go with you to New Helvetia or whatever but I don’t need anything from you. I don’t want to get into this weird barter system with you for the whole semester. I don’t need that.”

Elio was about to close the door when Kyle kissed him on the cheek. He looked embarrassed like he had been planning on just thanking him but his real emotions came through in an unexpected way. “Thank you, seriously.” 

“Yeah, yeah, let’s me get dressed and then we can go.”

Elio felt like he was juggling a lot of different things. He wanted Kyle to like him for some reason, he wanted to be friends with Lady Bird and Danny, he wanted to understand why Oliver was coming to Sacramento. He figured the first thing he could take care of was trying to be better friends with Lady Bird and attempting to have Kyle understand him. 

He left his room dressed and saw that Kyle was already outside, leaning against his car. He seemed to do that a lot. It was like he was constantly ready for a casual photo shoot. Elio laughed to himself. Kyle was always ready for people to be staring at him, and it made sense because objectively, he was hot. 

When they pulled up to New Helvetia, Lady Bird was just clocking out. No, she was just clocking in. Elio had brought his backpack, to read and do homework but he had no idea how long he would have to actually be with Kyle waiting to hang out with Lady Bird. He looked at Kyle as they sat down at what had become their normal table. 

“How long are we going to be waiting to hang out with her?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What time is she off, Kyle?”

Kyle answered, but under his breath. “Five.”

Elio looked at his watch. It was noon. “So, we’re going to be sitting here for five hours?”

“You got anything better to do? What, are you going to talk to Oliver?” He said the second part in a sing-songy voice that Elio frankly did not care for. 

“You do remember that I’m doing you a favor by being here, right? Like I’m the reason that you’re going to be hanging out with her. Ugh, whatever, I’m going to get coffee, I’ll get you one too.” 

Kyle started to say his order but Elio ignored him. He had already memorized it by now. He loved seeing the little things that people did. He thought it was cute that Kyle acted like he took his coffee black but then snuck in cream and sugar when he thought no one was looking. 

When he walked in, the ding alerted Lady Bird that there was someone coming in. It wasn’t very busy, it was a Saturday and the shop had a lull to it that was peaceful. “Hi, Lady Bird.” 

Lady Bird blushed. Oh, so this is why she wanted him to be there. Well, he wasn’t so sure, but it seemed like that was the direction things were going in. As much as he was probably into it, he was juggling too many other things. Like Kyle and Oliver. He didn’t think that Kyle would be in the picture for very much longer, but as of now it was too much. 

“Hi, Elio.” 

Elio ordered the two coffees, and as Lady Bird made them he decided to be blunt and just ask her what he wanted to know. “Why did you ask Kyle to bring me with him today?”

Lady Bird looked up, shocked. It was as if she never expected that Kyle would ever admit that to Elio. “He told you that?” 

“Well, yeah. Are you surprised?”

“It’s just surprising that you guys seem to be getting along so well.”

“He’s not a bad guy, you know.” Elio did not expect to show up to this meeting acting as Kyle’s wingman but that’s how it seemed like things were shaking out. 

“Hey- listen, I’m sorry about Danny by the way. You didn’t deserve to be treated like that.” Elio braced himself for her to say something mean, because after all, he did kiss Danny pretty soon after he had cheated on her. He didn’t know if she knew that, but he figured he could assume. He had heard Kyle say something in reference to him and Danny through the wall and he wasn’t dumb so it was safe to say she knew. 

“Don’t be sorry, it’s not your fault. I don’t like you, by the way, sorry.” 

“If anything, I’m relieved. Do you like Kyle?”

She looked out the window where Kyle was sitting and rolling up a cigarette. “I just feel like he would hurt me, you know? I’m a little scared of him.” 

“So, that’s why you wanted me to come.”

“Yeah, that’s why I wanted you to come. Also, I wanted to piss him off a little bit, because he can be such a douche sometimes. You should see him at The Deuce.”

“Oh, god, trust me, I know.” Elio laughed. He was happy that he had this alliance in Lady Bird. “I should get back or else Kyle is going to think I’m making moves on you. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

“Bye, Elio.” 

Elio walked out with the coffees in hand and gave Kyle’s to him. Kyle looked into the cup slyly to check to see if he would have to pretend to get a napkin to put cream in it.   
“I put your cream and sugar in it, Kyle. You’re secret is safe with me.”

Kyle looked up and looked like he was going to say something mean, but quickly changed his mind. “Thanks.”

Elio just nodded. He brought out a book and started to read. He knew they were going to be there for a while, but he didn’t really mind as much as he thought he would. They had a comfortable silence that he didn’t expect and it was nice. He could listen to music and read or transcribe and Kyle could read and do whatever else he wanted to do. 

The hours passed quickly, more quickly than they had before, and Elio got up in the last half hour before Lady Bird was off to get another coffee. 

“Should we have a signal?”

“What?”

“Like if things are going well with you and Kyle you could give me a signal and I would make myself scarce.” 

“Hm, maybe.”

“How about you ask me about my homeroom?”

“How am I supposed to work that into the conversation?”

“I don’t know, do they have homeroom in Italy? Is it different being here for school? It doesn’t really matter, Kyle will be happy with me leaving, anyway.”

Lady Bird rolled her eyes but nodded. “See you out there.”

Elio went back and sat down at the table. He was happy that Kyle might have a chance with Lady Bird. He knew or had a feeling that he liked her and it would be good for him to try to be a good person for her. He didn’t really know either of them when he really thought about it, but he had good feelings about them.

Soon enough, Lady Bird came outside carrying her folded up apron and brought a chair to the table they were sitting at. “Hey, Kyle.”

“Hi.” 

Elio rolled his eyes. He knew that they were American, but he didn’t realize that they were this boring. He was going to have to secret word himself out of there if they didn’t make any moves soon. 

“Wow, what conversationalists the two of you! It’s almost like I know both of you more than you guys know each other! Weird!” Now Elio felt himself acting weird, but he thought being out there and rambunctious was the only way for them to loosen up. And, it might help him get out of being a third wheel. 

“Hey, Elio, how’s your homeroom, by the way? I hear Mr. Stevens can be a real dick.” 

Thank god. Elio hit himself in the head. “Oh, shit, I just realized I was supposed to call my parents today. I gotta go.” Elio stood up and gathered his things. He winked and both Lady Bird and Kyle saw, thinking it was just for them. He was happy to walk home, it gave him some time alone. He was not used to having someone want him around so much. 

As he walked home, he thought about the upcoming trip with Oliver. He thought about what Oliver would want to do and talk about and how he would bring up the marriage thing. He had no idea how he was going to bring it up at all. He wondered how things were going with Kyle and Lady Bird. He decided that he wasn’t going to ask because he didn’t think that he wanted to know. 

The week passed by in a blur. He was doing homework and making friends and actually sitting with Kyle at lunch which was a nice change. He was surprised that the week went by so fast, but it was probably because he was spending time not thinking about the fact that Oliver was coming so soon. If he had been, he had no idea how long the week would last. 

Then, came the day. He woke up super early and tried to make himself look as happy and refreshed as he did in the summer. He was a little paler and his hair was longer, but other than that, he looked the same. His mother had told him that he couldn’t trust anyone to cut his hair in Sacramento and he had to wait until he came back home in winter for the haircut. He had been getting his hair cut by the same person since he was a kid, so it made sense. 

He didn’t know how he was going to ask Kyle to borrow the car. He had not been on very good terms with him that week, and he didn’t know why. It couldn’t be that his date with Lady Bird didn’t go well, Lady Bird told him that it went really well. He had been putting it off for a long time. He was good at doing that. Anything that was weighing on him, he was very consistent at pushing it aside until the very last minute. It was the same way he dealt with Oliver leaving last summer. 

Kyle came into his room before he could finish preparing his speech in favor of him borrowing the car. 

“Ready to pick up your ‘Oliver’?” Kyle not only used air quotes around Oliver, like he wasn’t sure if he was a real person but also had a tone that was dripping with sarcasm. Maybe it was anger? Jealousy? It was hard to tell. 

“I mean, I could just borrow your car and you wouldn’t have to come, you know.”  
“I wish, my mom is making me drive you. She said that it’s my punishment for being a shitty kid or something I don’t know. So, are you ready to go or not?” 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m ready. Let me just get my shoes on.”

“I don’t like you, you know.” Elio looked up from tying his shoe. He didn’t know if Kyle was talking about romantic like or not but it really could go either way. 

“Okay. I guess you’ll just have to put up with me for another 10 long weeks, then.” Elio almost laughed to himself, this was the same thing that his mother had told him about Oliver. Something told him that their relationship was not going to be following the same path. 

“It’s not like you like me, Elio. Don’t lie to me, I hate when people lie.”

“I do like you.”

“You don’t know me, and you shouldn’t like me. Besides, you have people practically throwing themselves at you, you don’t need me.”

“Kyle-”

Kyle surged toward Elio and kissed him. Elio felt like he was being thrown for a loop. He didn’t mind kissing Kyle, but he had other things on his mind. “I probably won’t get to do that again once we get him. I’ll miss that.” Kyle didn’t give Elio a chance to respond, “come on, let’s go get your boy.”

Elio didn’t say anything, he just brushed past Kyle and walked to the car. He wanted a world where he and Kyle could be together, not having to worry about anything else but that just was not in the cards. 

Thankfully, the drive to the airport wasn’t very long. It was quite pretty, too. He didn’t look at it when he was arriving, because he was too nervous about everything that was going on. Now that he was really seeing it though, he was feeling emotional. He was about to, for the second time, bring Oliver into the world he had carved out for himself. Without hoping for the future too much, he thought of all the places that he wanted to show Oliver in his time with them. He had no idea how long Oliver was staying, but Kyle’s mother had told him that he could stay as long as he wanted. When Elio heard this was when he knew that her and his mother would get along well. He hoped that they might meet someday. 

When they pulled up to the airport, he recognized Oliver immediately. His profile looked different in pants instead of shorts, but it was him. There was no way that it wasn’t. Kyle saw the expression on Elio’s face change and followed his gaze to where Oliver was standing. 

Kyle pulled over and looked at Elio expectantly. “Well? Go get him!”

Elio got out of the car, not knowing if he should hug him from behind or how to announce himself. He decided to go for the bravest thing because after all, he had flown all the way across the country to see him, Elio might as well be bold. 

Elio flung his arms around the tall man and whispered his own name in Oliver’s ear. “Elio.”

Oliver looked stunned for a moment, wondering who could be jumping him at the airport when everyone was so freaked out about security, but quickly realized what was going on. He turned so that they were fully embracing. “Oliver, Oliver.” Oliver put his face in Elio’s hair and took a deep breath in. Then, they heard a loud honk. 

“And that… must be Kyle.” 

“Oh yeah. Just wait till you see him.” 

“Should I be jealous?”

“I think it’s probably the other way around.” Elio skirted around that question with more ease than he thought. He figured that Oliver would be attracted to him because he was a cooler more indifferent version of himself. If he liked Elio, why wouldn’t he go for Kyle? Elio had thought about this before, but now that they were all together, he was starting to get worried. 

Oliver started to go to the backseat when Elio cut him off. “You’re going to be annoying about it, so I’ll sit in the back.” 

Oliver put his hands up and opened the front door. He then finally saw Kyle. Kyle turned and looked into Oliver’s eyes. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” 

“Holy shit.” Oliver looked stunned. 

“What?” Elio wanted him to say it. He wanted Oliver to say that Kyle was a hotter, American version of him. He wanted to rip the band-aid off and figure out if Oliver was going to be sneaking into Kyle’s room at night. 

“Are you guys sure you’re not related?”

Both Kyle and Elio winced, grossed out by the connotation of them being blood relatives. Oliver caught on because of course, he did. “Wow, I have a lot to catch up on, don’t I Elio?” 

Elio was relieved that he was talking directly at him. Hopefully, this meant that not all hope was lost. 

Kyle unceremoniously pulled away from the curb when there was finally room to pull out. “Do you have the same shitty music taste as Elio?”

Oliver and Elio gasped in unison. “I have a perfectly refined music taste, thank you very much. I am a teaching assistant at Columbia and I only like the refined songs of our time.”

Kyle rolled his eyes and put on the radio. Dave Matthews Band’s Crash Into Me was playing. They all had opinions at once. Elio and Oliver said, in unison, “I love this song!” And Kyle said, angrily and drawn out, “I fucking hate this song.” He switched the station. Elio and Oliver made sounds of disbelief. “My car, my rules, boys, sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a passion project that i am passionate about hating myself for keeping going for so long. it's 42 pages on my computer and has no sign of ending maybe it'll always be a WIP but i think we're getting somewhere 
> 
> thanks for the comments/kudos/ messages on tumblr @/lilchalamet you guys keep me sane in this weird world of crossover <3


	10. Kyle POV

Kyle saw Lady Bird and Elio talking in New Helvetia, and he was not feeling good about it. He didn’t know for sure what was going on, but he didn’t have a good feeling about it. He wanted to know why they seemed to be getting along with so well. He also wanted to know why Lady Bird wanted him to bring Elio. He realized bitterly that it was probably so that she could eventually be alone with him. Kyle tried not to get too angry. 

Eventually, Elio came back out with two coffees. Kyle knew that he was going to have to come up with an excuse to go inside and get cream and sugar. He didn’t want anyone to know that he took his coffee any way other than black. When Elio came back out, he put the coffee down on the table, it had a lid on it, which was surprising since they were going to be there for a while. He opened the lid and saw that it had milk in it. 

Elio winked at him, “your secret is safe with me.”

Kyle had no idea how Elio knew that he took cream and sugar with his coffee, but he hated the warm feeling in his stomach that came from someone else knowing his secret. He didn’t know if he wanted to tell Elio everything about himself or if he wanted to get as far away from him as possible. 

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, until Lady Bird came out at the end of her shift. Elio had gone back in to go to the bathroom or something, but Kyle decided not to be too worried about it. When Elio came back out and Lady Bird followed not long after, they talked for a little as the three of them, and then Elio made a somewhat dramatic exit. Kyle looked at both of them and was confused, but when Elio was behind Lady Bird and out of her vision, he gave Kyle a thumbs up and a heart sign with his fingers. What. The. Fuck. 

He swallowed dryly and reached for his coffee to calm down his nerves. He normally thought he was pretty good with girls, but that was only if he didn’t really say much. He was good in short bursts, like sprints. 

It was Lady Bird that started the conversation. “Elio seems nice. Do you like him?”  
“I think you like him.” Damnit. Kyle started right out of the gate angry. That was not something he intended to do. 

Lady Bird laughed. “Oh my god, you’re jealous!”

Kyle frowned into his coffee. “I am not jealous.” 

Lady Bird frowned, then she started smiling. “Oh my god, I can’t believe I didn’t see this before. You have a crush on him, don’t you? Like full on.”

Kyle thought about this for a second. He didn’t want to lie to Lady Bird, for some reason, but he also hadn’t lied for a while, so he figured he could keep it that way. He was just going to omit some information. “He’s seeing someone, kind of, so, he’s spoken for.” This conversation was not going in the direction that Kyle was expecting it to go. He didn’t know if it was showing any time of stopping. It felt like a runaway train. He decided he was going to ask the question that was on his mind since this couldn’t get any worse. “Why did you want me to bring Elio?” 

“Because you’re scary as hell, Kyle.”

This sent Kyle spinning. “Huh?”

Lady Bird looked like she was seconds away from pulling her hair out. “Because it’s easier to have a third person there when you are with someone you have a crush on.”

Kyle felt like he was sinking into the ground. He had no idea if it was him that she liked or not, but he didn’t want to ask. Lady Bird stood up. “Well, I have to go, my mom is expecting me home.” After she stood up, she leaned down and pressed a kiss on Kyle’s cheek. “I know you didn’t ask, but yes, it’s you.”

Kyle sat with this for a while. Lady Bird didn’t like Elio, she liked him. He wanted to believe that so bad, but it wasn’t going to happen as fast as he wanted it to. She had never seemed very confident, but Kyle had a feeling that because Elio had been there she was surer of herself. He was suddenly very glad that Elio was in his life, for the first time. He didn’t want to make a big deal about it though, so when Elio didn’t ask, he didn’t divulge. It seemed like they had an understanding. Elio knew that Kyle wasn’t ready to talk about it somehow and Kyle knew that Elio was okay not knowing. 

The week went by painfully slowly for Kyle. He was scared to meet Oliver because he was worried that he would be nothing like him. More than that, he was scared that he and Oliver would be similar. He had no idea how to act around Oliver, and the only thing that made him feel better was that it didn’t seem like Elio had any idea how it was going to go either. 

Kyle’s mom told him that he should drive Elio to pick them up at the airport, and that wasn’t something that Kyle minded. He wanted to see how they interacted and he figured seeing them meet again for the first time in however long was a good place to start. 

On the day of, he was pacing in his room. His biggest hang-up was that when Oliver was there, he probably wouldn’t be able to kiss Elio anymore. It was the situation of he didn’t know how much he liked that until he couldn’t have it anymore. He granted himself one more just to make sure it was out of his system. He could pursue something with Lady Bird now, and Danny was definitely still on his mind somewhere. He didn’t bother knocking and Elio looked up shocked. He looked like he was in the middle of preparing a speech. Kyle decided to talk first. 

“Ready to pick up ‘Oliver’?” Kyle used air quotes, and in his mind, he saw, in Elio’s handwriting ‘Oliver <3’, something that he never quite got over. 

“I mean, I could just borrow your car and you wouldn’t have to come, you know.” Kyle almost laughed at how practiced that sounded. Elio was actually scared of Oliver and his meeting, it seemed like. Or he didn’t want to be a burden, which was a nice thought, but Kyle wasn’t going to let Elio go to the airport by himself. 

Kyle decided to blame it on his mom because that was easier than saying he wanted to spend time with Elio. “I wish, my mom is making me drive you. She said that it’s my punishment for being a shitty kid or something I don’t know. So, are you ready to go or not?” 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m ready. Let me just get my shoes on.”

Elio acting so casual with him made him angry. It made him want to say something to him because no one was that casual and comfortable with Kyle. He hated it. He had to put Elio in his place. He decided what he was going to say in the middle of Elio tying his left shoe. “I don’t like you, you know.” Kyle immediately regretted saying that. The look that Elio gave him was one that was worse than sadness, it was acceptance. 

“Okay. I guess you’ll just have to put up with me for another 10 long weeks, then.” Kyle expected to hear more sadness in Elio’s voice, but he didn’t. Elio said that like someone in his life had said that before, it was too familiar. Kyle wanted to get some truth or emotion out of Elio, so he just said what he was the most afraid of. 

“It’s not like you like me, Elio. Don’t lie to me, I hate when people lie.”

“I do like you,” Elio said that so genuinely it took all of Kyle not to cry. No one had ever said that so honestly to him. He wanted to reject it right away. 

 

“You don’t know me, and you shouldn’t like me. Besides, you have people practically throwing themselves at you, you don’t need me.”  
“Kyle-”

Kyle didn’t have time to hear Elio pretend to like him. It wasn’t worth his time. Instead, he surged forward and kissed him. He knew that his time to kiss Elio was running out, literally down to the hours and he wanted one more before it was too late. Elio wasn’t exactly kissing him back, but it was enough for what Kyle needed. 

“I probably won’t get to do that again once we get him. I’ll miss that.” Kyle didn’t give Elio a chance to respond, “come on, let’s go get your boy.” Elio walked by Kyle and looked at him almost wistfully, not saying anything. Kyle thought about how easy life would be if they could just like each other. That would never happen, though. They would never work, even if Kyle willed it to. 

The drive to the airport went fairly well. Well, if Kyle didn’t consider that Elio looked like a goddamn nervous wreck the whole time. The best part was, Kyle knew that Elio thought he was playing off how much he really cared about this Oliver guy. He knew he was playing it off because he had played this game before. He had pretended not to care about people until it was too late. 

Kyle realized he had no idea what this guy looked like. He had a blurry picture in his mind, but when they pulled up to the airport, that was not what he had in mind. This guy was huge. By all accounts, he was the perfect specimen. He was tall and built as hell, and he seemed to have legs that went on for days. Elio just looked like he had seen a ghost. Like he didn’t even know if the person he was looking at was really there. Kyle decided to be a good guy and snap Elio out of his trance. 

Kyle looked at Elio expectantly. “Well? Go get him!” Elio seemed to wake up and he got out of the car. 

Kyle watched the exchange with a kind of emotion that he couldn’t quite put a finger on. It was happiness for Elio, but a sadness, like he knew that he was watching something that was so fragile it didn’t know if it could last. It was so beautiful and perfect of a fit that they had to do everything right to stay together. He watched Elio decide what to do to greet Oliver, who’s back was turned. It was hilarious, Kyle could so easily see every thought pass across Elio’s face until finally, he embraced Oliver in a hug from behind. He whispered something into Oliver’s ear, and he was sure that he kissed Oliver, but he could have been imagining things. They embraced for a second before they came to the car. 

To Kyle’s surprise, Oliver sat in the front seat. He started the conversation by saying “I’ve heard a lot about you,” as Oliver sat down. 

He took one look at Kyle and balked. “Holy shit.” Kyle figured that it was the fact that he and Elio shared some traits. This could have been why Elio was nervous, that maybe Oliver would like him instead, but he didn’t see that happening. They didn’t really look that much alike, anyway, and Oliver clearly had a soft spot for Elio. 

Kyle was going to say something, but Elio was much quicker. “What?” 

Oliver finally said what Kyle assumed that he was freaking out about when he first saw him. “Are you guys sure you’re not related?” Kyle really tried not to cringe too hard, but he did, and he saw that Elio did, in the rearview mirror. Shit, he really still did like Elio. But, the implication that they were related made him lose that a little. It seemed like Oliver understood why they were both freaked out by this. “Wow, I have a lot to catch up on, don’t I, Elio?” 

Kyle was relieved that he could just play chauffer because he was not ready to talk to them while they made googly eyes at each other. He noted that they were both big on using names when they talked to each other, which was fine, but weird. Kyle figured it was nothing. 

They got back home and there was a nervous energy that seemed to be buzzing between Elio and Oliver. It seemed like they were on a different wavelength completely. Kyle decided to take one for the team and tell them he was smoking and stay outside. He could use a cigarette, so it wasn’t quite a lie. He watched them walk in together, getting as close as they could without touching. Kyle was morbidly curious about what they were going to be talking about, so he only smoked half a cigarette before going inside. 

When he walked inside, he got a glass from the kitchen. He shook his head at himself because that felt so normal and so fluid, even though he had only really spied on Elio once before. He put the glass to the wall, but quickly realized he didn’t need it; they were yelling. 

Even so, he could only hear some of it. It sounded like Elio was pacing because the volume of his voice was going up and down. 

“Why didn’t you tell me….married….I hate you!”

That was the clearest thing that Kyle heard. It was Elio. Elio, who had waited for so long to see Oliver again and was met with this. Elio who was a really good guy and was met with this shitty situation he didn’t deserve. Kyle couldn’t take it anymore. He was going to do something about it. He stood up and walked the two steps to Eli’s room. He barged in, and what he saw was not what he expected. They were kissing. Luckily, they didn’t seem to even notice Kyle trying to be a hero, so he walked back out and went to his room. He laid on his bed and tried to read but it was pointless. Oliver was always going to be Elio’s number one. Kyle had known that before he even met Oliver, but now, he knew for sure.


	11. Elio POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elio and Oliver talk, in person, finally.

Elio couldn’t believe that Oliver was there. He couldn’t believe that the was seeing Oliver again. It was overwhelming to be in the same car as Kyle and Oliver at the same time. It felt like summer all over again whenever he was with Marzia and Oliver in the same space. Except for this time, it felt different. It felt like he knew what he really wanted and that was Oliver. The only problem was that he didn’t know if Oliver felt the same way. 

A part of him thought that Kyle would be a great person to go to if and when Oliver let him down gently, but that didn’t seem like a very good thing to do. He had already done that once, and he didn’t think that he could do it again and not feel like it was becoming a pattern. 

Luckily, he had worked things out with Danny, mostly because he was only a brief rebound for Danny anyway, and he knew that. That would have been too much on his plate to even know what to do with. Just last summer, he wasn’t getting any attention from anyone, and then it was like all of a sudden, he existed to people. Before he had to fight for attention and fit what he wanted to say in as little words as possible, but now, it seemed like people actually listened to him. It was overwhelming, and definitely something that he didn’t ask for, but it seemed to be happening all at once when really, the only person he wanted attention from was Oliver. 

When they all arrived at the house, it seemed like Kyle was going to give them some space, which was maybe the nicest thing that Kyle had done the whole time that Elio had been there. He smiled at this, thinking that maybe he was starting to crack through Kyle’s tough shell. He didn’t know why, but he desperately wanted to be the one that understood Kyle the most. Luckily, it didn’t seem like the competition was that fierce. He walked Oliver to his room, where he could put his things down. He didn’t know where Oliver would be sleeping yet, but he decided not to worry about that. He was already thinking about a million different things and he didn’t need that on top of it all. 

He had taken Oliver’s bags and set them down on the floor of his room. It all felt too familiar, too similar to taking Oliver’s bags to his room in the villa. It was as if he was constantly starting over with Oliver, never quite sure he knew where he stood, always second guessing every remark, every steely glance. And, at the same time, everything that was familiar to him just made it feel like it had always meant to happen. He was meant to meet Oliver, whether it be in Italy for the first time or while he was in college or while he was studying at Kyle’s house. It all glowed with an aspect of destiny. He wanted to know. But he also wanted to live in the limbo of everything being normal for as long as possible. That ended up not being very long. 

“Are you happy I came here?” Elio could not believe that he was asking this. He literally could not believe that there was any part of Oliver’s mind that didn’t know how utterly obsessed he was with him. 

“Are you kidding me?” Elio didn’t want to sound mean, but he was so full of emotion that it came out as more of a yell than he wanted it to be. This seemed to slap Oliver in the face, and he wasn’t expecting that at all. 

“Elio.” 

“Of course, I’m happy, Oliver, I worship you. You know this.” Elio didn’t understand. Here he was, standing in front of the best person he had ever met, and he was being greeted with doubt. He decided it was time to say some of the thoughts that were living in his head out loud, he figured he had nothing to lose at this point. “You’re the best person I have ever met in my life, Oliver.” Elio was no longer last summer’s Elio. He was in a new place by himself and he was not going to beat around the bush anymore, especially with Oliver. 

Oliver seemed taken aback at this, like it was all too much, too fast to be believable. He shook his head. It looked like he was going to cry. “If I was such a good person, why did I call off my wedding, huh? Why did I walk out on the person I was supposed to marry with barely any notice?” It seemed to Elio that Oliver hadn’t talked to anyone about this yet. It made sense when he thought about it, because he didn’t think that Oliver’s parents would have loved to have that conversation. That made him very sad, but happy that he could be the one that he talked to, finally. 

Elio saw that Oliver was getting emotional and he was worried that it was going in a direction that he didn’t want it to go in. He was pacing back and forth in the room because he had so much energy built up he didn’t know what to do with it. “Because you didn’t want to be with her, and if you had married her, you would have been a bad person. I just wish I had known that you weren’t getting married. I wish I had been there for you.” 

“You don’t understand.” 

“I understand that you didn’t tell me you weren’t getting married! I understand that you gave me radio silence and I still loved you through that!” Elio realized what he had said and tried to backpedal. A declaration of love was not necessarily the move, especially considering Oliver seemed to be in panic mode. So, he went for the exact opposite, ready to make something up about being angry to save face. “I hate you!” 

Elio didn’t get to finish his rant, because Oliver had caught him when he was on his way back mid-pace. Oliver was kissing him. Oliver was kissing him, and they were together for the first time in so long and Oliver was the one kissing him. Elio knew how this game went. He was going to get too invested in the way things were going, and then Oliver was going to pull away. It always happened like this. He was always the one leaving, from the first day to the very last day, at the train station. 

Elio heard someone opening the door and he wanted to kick himself. There was a part of him that wanted Kyle to see what was happening, assuming it was Kyle. It had to be, Kyle’s mom always knocked, and his dad had been in the hospital for the last couple of days. He was the one facing the door, so he was the one that saw that it was Kyle that had barged in. He looked like he was incredibly sad, and then walked right out. Elio realized that he probably came in because it sounded like they were fighting. He didn’t know if they were or not, but he did know that they would need to talk, and soon. As much as he was loving kissing Oliver, he pulled away. He walked over and sat on the bed. 

“We should talk.” Elio didn’t want to acknowledge that he had just dropped the “L” bomb because he wasn’t ready to have that serious of a talk yet. He didn’t even know he was going to say it, it just came out. He was almost glad it did so early though because it was how he really felt. 

Oliver sat down next to him and nodded. This felt like a role reversal to Elio. It was Oliver that had always wanted to talk in the past, and now it was Elio that needed something, anything from Oliver. 

“Ask me anything, I will try to tell you what is going on.”

“When did you call it off?” Elio didn’t want to beat around the bush, he wanted to know why Oliver didn’t get married and how long he had been broken up for. A part of Elio selfishly hoped that Oliver realized what they had was special, but he knew he couldn’t count on that. 

“The week before the wedding.” Oliver looked like he really had to think about this. It was almost like he had to go back and remember that time that he had tried his best to block out. 

Elio tried to smash down his anger and sadness. He wanted to ask one question in particular, but he didn’t want to assume, and he didn’t want to be wrong. “When was the wedding supposed to be?” Elio figured that if he knew when it was, he would know if he had anything to do with the affair being called off. 

“First week of September.” Oliver laughed, but it was dry, and fake. “A perfect fall wedding, can you believe that bullshit? She didn’t even love me, she told me herself. Everything was just to get her parents off her back, but pretending to love me from afar was something different than being with me for the rest of our lives.”

Elio swallowed. He didn’t know how to process this. Their age difference wasn’t something that bothered him ever, but he felt so, so immature in this moment. He had no idea how to be the right kind of supportive for Oliver even though he wanted to be. “You loved her.” Elio didn’t want to ask it as a question, because he didn’t want Oliver to try to dance around a lie. 

“I do, well, I did, I guess.” It didn’t go unmissed on Elio that what Oliver had said would have been exactly what he would have said at their wedding. He needed one more answer before he was willing to turn over the power. He swallowed down the lump in his throat that the implication of the wrong answer would bring. He had gotten this far, and he decided that it was now or never. 

“Would I have ever seen you again?” Oliver looked like he was going to answer in a rush, but Elio wanted to make himself perfectly clear. “Would I have ever seen you again if you had gotten married? Please don’t lie, I can handle the truth.” Elio didn’t know if he could, but he figured if he lied and said that he could, maybe Oliver would be honest with him. 

Oliver seemed to be affected by Elio clarifying. He got solemn. “Probably not.” 

Elio nodded and rested his hand on his chin. He really didn’t need any more information than that. He didn’t expect to get any, either. Oliver was always a man of a few words, and the six weeks they had spent together in the summer had prepared him for this. “Thank you.” Elio didn’t know what he was thanking Oliver for, but it felt like the right thing to say. He wanted Oliver to know that he really was thankful for him. He knew that Oliver had always been worried about ‘messing him up’ even though Elio knew that was the farthest from the truth. “I really do love you, you know.” Elio never thought he would be brave enough to say that, but he figured that there was nothing to lose. He didn’t want to waste any days, he didn’t want to live in limbo for the entire time that Oliver was taking this trip to Sacramento. 

“What?” Oliver seemed confused. Elio thought that maybe this meant that he hadn’t processed that this wasn’t the first time he had said it that day. “Why?” 

Elio shook his head. Oliver was book smart, sure, but he was dumb as all hell. He didn’t know how someone that looked like he did and was the kind of person that he was and also felt any insecurity. “Because you’re it for me. I know that you don’t feel the same way, but I just needed you to know. I didn’t want to waste time again.” Elio felt himself rambling, but he wanted to get it all out before he lost his nerve. He was so used to talking fast in order to get everything that he wanted to say that he didn’t know how to slow down once he had someone’s full attention. 

“Elio, you will find better people than me. One day, I will just be a blip on your radar. I will just exist as a memory for you and nothing else. That’s fine. It seems like you have found people better already.”

Elio had to consciously not yell, but instead, he was talking low and slow, almost scaring himself with how passionate he was being. “How could you possibly say that? How could you say that like you don’t know that you being just a memory is my biggest fear? And that you being a memory could never just be a blip but my whole life calculated as a before and after.” 

“What about Kyle? What about Marzia?” 

Elio couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was pouring his heart out to Oliver and he was getting met with wall after wall. He needed to break down one or else he would be blocked from Oliver forever. “Are you serious? You are mad at me because I have been with other people while you were engaged?”

“Did you fuck him?” 

Elio felt like he was back at Monet’s Berm, after their first midnight encounter. He felt like he had nothing to say to defend himself, but he just told the truth. He lifted his shoulders in defeat and said, “no, we didn’t fuck, Oliver. Why do you even care?” Oliver took a long pause. It seemed like he might leave the room. He was looking at the door like a trapped animal trying to plot an escape. He got up, but instead of leaving, he paced the room, back and forth. 

“Did it ever occur to you that the reason I called off my wedding, was you?” Oliver said that like it was nothing. He said it like it wasn’t the most groundbreaking thing in the entire world. Elio didn’t know how to respond to this. Every part of him was screaming that this wasn’t real, that this was a test. 

“I-”

“Do you ever think that maybe the only reason I called off the wedding was that I finally understood what it felt like to have someone that actually didn’t treat me like shit?” Elio didn’t know what to do with that information. “That’s why I kept the postcard. That’s why I found your number.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” It was a whisper more than anything like Oliver was so fragile he couldn’t talk too loud or he would break. Elio never knew why Oliver hid things like this from him. 

“Because how could I have pressured you like that? I have already ruined so much for you. I can’t risk hurting you again.” Elio reached out to have Oliver come back to bed. It was so late and he was ready to go to bed. Oliver came willingly. 

Once they were laying down, Elio whispered into Oliver’s ear. “Elio. You will never ruin anything for me, for as long as I live.” 

Laying down, suddenly Elio felt like he was home in this bed. Oliver was his homecoming. Oliver was next to him, and it felt like he was safe. 

They woke up the next morning and Elio decided to take Oliver to New Helvetia. He wanted him to meet Lady Bird. He felt like they might have something in common. He didn’t really know, but he wanted Oliver to know everything about his world so that they wouldn’t have any secrets. They walked to the shop in comfortable silence. It reminded him of the days they spent together in Italy, going on jogs and swimming and going in the river. He could get used to this. He knew that he couldn’t, but he really wanted to. 

He walked in, with Oliver next to him. Lady Bird was behind the counter. It was almost too much but in the most perfect way. Elio never expected to be able to have so many of his favorite people in one room at the same time, but that was becoming a possibility. 

They walked up to the counter and Lady Bird lit up. “Hi, Elio! How are you?” 

“Good, thanks!” Elio was lying. He was amazing. He was fantastic. He had never been better, but he decided ‘good’ was sufficient. He felt like he was practically glowing, anyway. He looked at Oliver who was grinning. “This is Oliver. Oliver, this is Lady Bird.” 

Oliver reached out and shook Lady Bird’s hand. Lady Bird was the first to speak. “I have heard a lot about you, Oliver. Someone was very excited that you were coming into town.” If Elio wasn’t on cloud nine, he would have been embarrassed, but he was too happy to be affected by the light razzing. 

“I have heard a lot about you, as well.” Oliver turned to Elio. “This must be the famous ‘Bird Woman’?” Elio loved that there was a comradery happening immediately. If he was thinking clearly, he might have been jealous of how quickly Lady Bird and Oliver were getting along, but really it made him happy. 

While they were waiting for their coffees and the coffee that Elio was getting for Kyle, they were talking to Lady Bird. Then, they heard the bell of the door ring, and they all turned when Lady Bird put her hand to her mouth. It was Kyle. He looked awful. He looked like he had been crying but then attempted to cover it up as much as he could. He walked all the way towards them like they were his last steps. 

Then, after taking a breath, he finally said what Elio was the most worried about. “He’s dead.”


	12. Kyle POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyle reacts to his father's death.

Kyle knew it was coming. He should have been more prepared. He was ready for this ever since his dad was diagnosed. When that happened, he thought the worst thing would be watching and waiting for his dad to die. He was so wrong. The worst thing was the after. Was the fact that his dad was now in the past tense of his life. His dad wouldn’t even see him graduate from the school that he wanted Kyle to go to so badly. This was the permanent after. He wished he had known that he was living in the before so that he knew to savor it. 

He walked out of the hospital doors blindly. His mother was still there, dealing with the paperwork. Kyle never understood why it seemed like it was so hard to die. There was a mountain of paperwork and they didn’t even fix his dad. They were charging his mother an arm and a leg and a mountain of paperwork and all they got in return was a body bag. They didn’t even get that. They couldn’t afford to get the body taken out of the hospital, not that day at least, he didn’t know where they would have put it anyway. He walked out before he could watch them wheel his father down to the morgue. 

Once Kyle hit the outside air, he started running. It was like he needed to get as much fresh air in his lungs as possible to clear them out of hospital stale air. He needed to focus on how hard his lungs were working to avoid thinking about the way the doctor was talking about his father like he was some kind of John Doe that was just there to make him money. That’s all his father was. That’s all his father was to the government, to the hospital, to the doctors that didn’t catch his cancer until it was too late. He was a number and now he was a body with a toe tag headed down to the morgue. 

Kyle ran until he got to his car. The car that was parked seven levels up. He had used the elevator before because he was too numb to feel his legs on the way into the hospital, but now, he ran up the stairs two at a time. He knew where he had to go. He didn’t know why he felt so drawn to where he was going, but he knew he needed someone’s support and he hoped that he would find it where he was going. When he got in the car, the music that Elio listened to was playing on the radio, it being the last station that was playing. Normally, Kyle would scoff and turn it off, but it felt like he wasn’t alone with it on, so he left it. It felt like he had Elio there with him, even though he was riding solo. 

When Kyle pulled up to New Helvetia, he saw the silhouettes that he would recognize anywhere. Even though he had just met Oliver, he had the kind of profile that was easy to spot. He saw that Elio and Oliver were talking to Lady Bird, and before he could stop himself and talk himself out of it, he barged into the shop. Kyle didn’t know how he was going to bring up what he was clearly freaking out about, and he didn’t know how to dip his toes into the subject lightly since he was still reeling from it, so he just spat out what he was thinking and feeling. Well, trying not to think about, if he was being honest with himself. 

“He’s dead.” Kyle felt like he was going to fall over. He wasn’t near enough to a counter to lean on something, and he was too far away from any tables. He felt himself going down, and fast. It seemed like Elio had realized this and ran to his aid. Elio caught him and Lady Bird had run around the counter and taken her apron off on the way. Elio guided Kyle to a table to sit down at. When Kyle looked around, he realized that Elio had led him to the table he always sat at. Elio was trying to give him comfort in the things that he was used to. Kyle could have cried if he wasn’t in shock. Lady Bird sat across from him, looking at him intently. Kyle didn’t even know if she knew that his dad had been sick, but the way she was looking at him with the kindest eyes in the world, it didn’t matter. It just mattered that she was there for him and was going to be there until he was ready to talk. 

Elio and Oliver were behind her, too. Kyle selfishly wanted Elio to stay and Oliver to leave, because, who is this guy, but he knew that wouldn’t do anyone any favors. He looked at Elio and with a nod, he said, “You guys should go. Walk around the city. Oliver isn’t here forever.” 

Elio looked confused. Like he couldn’t believe that there was a world where Kyle was behaving like this. Kyle wondered if he was behaving outside of how he normally would, and the look that Elio was giving him said that he was. Elio nodded though, understanding that Lady Bird was going to be with him. “Call me if you need anything, ok?” 

Kyle looked confused. “You don’t have a cell phone?” 

“Oliver does.” Elio took a napkin and wrote down Oliver’s phone number. Kyle was shocked. Had he memorized Oliver’s phone number?

Oliver seemed to pick up on this, too. “You, absolute dork. You memorized my phone number?” Elio blushed. It was nice to see Elio so happy. Kyle didn’t expect to feel that way. He expected to want everyone in the world to be under the same dark cloud he was, but it turned out that seeing Elio happy made him believe that maybe one day he could be happy like that too. Elio and Oliver walked out, nearly holding hands, but neither one made the move to do so. It was nice. It was the kind of almost PDA that seemed so very Elio to him. Elio kept turning his head back to watch Kyle, almost as if he thought Kyle was going to explode if he didn’t keep an eye on him. 

Sitting with Lady Bird, things felt nice. She was nice. He was worried though. Did he really like her? He didn’t even really know her. This made him think about Danny. Kyle hated that he should have been excited to be spending time getting to know Lady Bird, and seeing if there was anything there, but really, he wanted to be with the person that was there from the start, Danny. Danny was the only person that had seen him at his weakest. He was the one that was there when he found out about his dad’s cancer. He was the only one that saw him cry and didn’t give him endless shit about it. 

Lady Bird was giving him a weird look. It was almost like she could read his mind. “You don’t like me, do you, Kyle?” 

Kyle didn’t expect that to come out of her mouth. “Huh?” 

“I know this probably isn’t what you expected me to say, but I don’t want you to pretend to like me. I have been through that too recently and it sucks. I want to be there for you, but I can’t be put through the ringer like that again.” 

“I think I like someone else.” Kyle didn’t expect to admit that. He didn’t expect to be having this conversation hours after his father was pronounced dead, but it was kind of nice that this is what they were talking about instead of that. It was like Lady Bird knew that Kyle would bring it up if he wanted to talk about it. He realized that she brought this up because she wanted to prevent what happened with Danny from happening again. Kyle regretted saying that he liked someone else because he didn’t even know if that someone liked him back. He just knew that it was who he wanted to be with more than anything else. 

“Do you want to use the phone to call them?” Kyle noticed that Lady Bird didn’t say ‘she’. He was so, so grateful for that. Lady Bird was someone that he didn’t know that well but he could tell that she was fiercely loyal and that was something that he really appreciated. Mostly because there weren’t many people in his life that tended to stick around for him anymore. 

“I don’t know his number.” For some reason, the fact that he didn’t know Danny’s number was more embarrassing than admitting it was a ‘he’ he was crushing on. He had wondered absently if Lady Bird thought he was talking about Elio, but she talked to Elio enough to have known about Oliver, it seemed. She was almost more excited than him that Oliver was coming, and always talked about Elio being reunited with his true love. 

“What do you mean? Didn’t he give it to you?” Lady Bird looked confused. Maybe they weren’t on the same page after all. Maybe Kyle had read her wrong. 

“I don’t know. I never asked for it. He doesn’t even know I like him. It’s stupid. I don’t want to call him.” Kyle paused for a second, trying to come up with a game plan. “You know what? I’m just gonna get out of your hair, I should just go home.” 

As Kyle went to stand up, Lady Bird grabbed his wrist. “I have his number, you know.” Kyle looked at her confused, but mostly angry. How dare she assume she knew everything about him? He was not that easy to read, that was for sure. Because if Lady Bird knew who he was talking about, then maybe Danny knew that he had a crush on him, and he didn’t know how he felt about that. No. He didn’t feel great about it, because it seemed like when Danny liked someone, he made a move, and Danny had not made any moves on Kyle. He had kissed Elio, who was basically the European, more put together version of Kyle, so it wasn’t even worth trying. 

“Who’s?” Kyle decided he was going to call Lady Bird on her bluff. He had a feeling that she was just saying that so that Kyle thought she was onto him. 

Lady Bird was getting up and walking inside to the back. She was just smiling to herself like she was on a game show, the whole world her stage. 

“Where are you going?” Kyle had to shout now because Lady Bird had just gone inside and barely got that sentence out before the door swung shut. Lady Bird just kept going to the back and put a finger up to get him to wait. Kyle thought he should just leave. He realized he could do that, but he didn’t really want to. There was nowhere for him to go. He certainly didn’t want to go home, and he didn’t want to go to the hospital. He also didn’t want to go to The Deuce, because he didn’t actually like anyone that hung out there, it was a real bore. Lady Bird came out triumphantly, with a grin too big on her face. She slapped a piece of paper down on the table. It was a number, but there wasn’t a name on it. 

“What’s this?” Kyle wanted her to say that it was just a random seven numbers, that it was a note she had scribbled on the back, but he knew it wasn’t her handwriting. Lady Bird had the handwriting that said ‘I’m here, get fucking used to it’. This handwriting, on the other hand, was smaller, a lot more nervous. Kyle had a feeling he knew exactly whose number it was. 

“It’s Danny’s number.” Lady Bird paused for what Kyle assumed was dramatic effect. “I’m not an idiot, you know. I see the way you look at him. I know he could be good for you.” 

“Are you,” Kyle didn’t know how to even begin that question. There was so much weird history between the three of them and he had never dealt with something like this before. The idea of one person liking him was crazy enough and then to have the possibility of another was something else. 

“I’m not mad if that’s what you’re trying to ask.” Lady Bird was laughing. Lady Bird was laughing at him. Kyle wanted to laugh, but it caught in his throat. What should have been a laugh turned into a sob. 

Kyle didn’t want to cry. Kyle didn’t want to cry in front of anyone, especially Lady Bird. He wanted to be alone and with people at the same time. He wanted to scream in the middle of a busy mall and have everyone pay attention to him at once. He wanted to dial 911 just to have someone come to his rescue. He wanted to run to the hospital and go down to the morgue just to make sure. He wanted to yell at the doctors that they had the wrong guy. He wanted to yell at god that they took the wrong person. It should have been him. It should have been Kyle that had the toe tag in the morgue, not his father. His father didn’t smoke cigarettes. His father didn’t have a stance on hand-rolled versus premade, because he didn’t even smoke. 

Lady Bird stopped laughing when she realized that Kyle was crying. She knelt down next to him. She was looking at Kyle like he was weak, and he hated it. He hated it because he was weak. He hated it because he needed someone to look at him like that, and he would never have admitted it. He hated it because this was how everyone was going to look at him in the after, now. This was his after. He heard footsteps behind him and didn’t want to look up to see who it was. He didn’t want to exist in this world, and seeing another person would just remind him that he did. Lady Bird did look up behind his head when the footsteps got even closer. Kyle felt like he might recognize them, but that wouldn’t make any sense. The footsteps he thought he heard wouldn’t be here. Not now. Not alone. But, maybe they were. 

“Hi, Kyle.” There was a hand on his shoulder. Kyle didn’t have to look up to know who it was. He closed his eyes in a vain attempt to squeeze the rest of his tears out before he looked up so that he could hold a brave front. This didn’t work, but it was something. At least he wasn’t actively crying anymore when he looked up and saw him standing above. 

“Danny.” Kyle looked at Lady Bird now, who was making moves to leave. “How?” 

“I called him when I went inside to get his number. Elio told me you guys were close. I figured he could help.” Kyle didn’t know what to say to that. He was surrounded by people that cared about him and it felt so damn good. 

Danny looked down at him. “Can I take you home?” Kyle didn’t know what to say. It was like Danny had read his mind. He certainly couldn’t drive in this state. He didn’t know if he should leave his car though. 

“Your car will be fine here overnight, don’t worry.” Lady Bird was there to step in and qualm his worries that were so trivial but still at the front of his mind. 

Kyle blindly followed Danny to his car. Danny opened the door for him and like clockwork, as soon as the door shut, Kyle started crying again. Danny sat down in the driver’s seat, showing no intention of starting the car anytime soon. Kyle hated that he was sobbing. He hated that he had let himself go. He also hated that he didn’t just let himself do that. His fucking dad had just died, he should be allowed to be sad. When he looked over at Danny, he saw a look that he realized he was looking for. It was one that was free of any and all judgment. He saw a calm face that seemed like it truly cared about him. Kyle was feeling manic so he decided to go for it. He leaned across the console and kissed Danny. 

For a second, there was nothing. No movement. Danny was stiff as a board, neither accepting Kyle or rejecting him. Then, after the world had stopped for Kyle, he kissed him back. Then, he pulled away. Kyle didn’t know what to take from this. 

“Listen, Kyle. I don’t know if you’re fucking with me or if I’m just a good option because shit is going down, but this isn’t the right time.” 

Kyle balked. He didn’t expect this response. He didn’t expect to be met with confusion or anger, but he understood. He just nodded. Danny started the car and drove him home. Kyle noted that the station playing was the one that Elio demanded they listen to. It was like they shared custody of the radio, they listened to Elio’s stations on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He felt safe with the station on and Danny in the driver’s seat. They drove the rest of the way in silence. It wasn’t bad though, because Kyle felt like he was supported. Danny had been there the whole time, and he knew or had an idea of what Kyle was feeling. 

When they pulled up, Kyle turned to Danny to thank him, but Danny put his hands up. “Don’t thank me. We can talk at school, or whenever you’re ready. I care about you, ok? Call me if you need anything.”

Elio opened the door. In his hands, he was holding Kyle’s favorite tobacco, rolling papers, and a paper bag from his favorite bookstore. Elio had figured all of this out by just paying attention since they never really talked about any of this. Kyle didn’t know how to react to someone being so nice and making so many gestures like it was nothing. He hugged Elio for the first time platonically and god it felt good. It felt like he was actually coming home. For the first time, his home felt like a home. It felt like it had a family that cared about him. It just happened to be that the family wasn’t his biological family, but Elio, Lady Bird, and Danny. Maybe Oliver, too, he wasn’t sure yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The amount of support this story gets is honestly amazing. I literally feel like I'm writing it for myself but then it shakes me to my core like people like this ??? Wild. I love writing this funky crossover and I'm obsessed with Kyle so the train keeps goin! 
> 
> My tumblr is @/lilchalamet if you want to holler at me there. Also if you want to comment telling me what I'm doing wrong/right I'm all ears.


	13. Elio POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elio tries to be a good friend and boyfriend in the same breath. It's harder than he thinks.

Elio didn’t know what to do when Kyle came into New Helvetia. He had never dealt with someone who lost someone so close to them before and he certainly didn’t know how he was supposed to react when it was Kyle’s dad that was the one that died. It wasn’t unexpected, but he could tell it still hurt Kyle like hell. He didn’t know if he should be there for him or if Oliver being there would make things worse or better. He just wanted to be a good friend and nothing else mattered. 

“You can go, show Oliver the city, I’ll be okay, I promise.” Kyle seemed like he actually meant what he was saying, so he decided to give him a phone number to call just in case Kyle needed him. 

“Here, take this, call just in case anything happens, okay?” 

Kyle looked confused, looking down at the seven numbers on the paper wondering what they were from. It made sense, it wasn’t a nearby area code and Kyle knew that Elio didn’t have a cell phone. Elio felt like he should explain himself, but Oliver spoke up before he could say anything, he was looking over both their shoulders’. 

“Oh my god. I can’t believe you memorized my number, you goose!” 

Elio just blushed. Truthfully, he memorized it because he didn’t want to come upon a situation where he needed Oliver and couldn’t reach him. It didn’t feel ridiculous at the time, because he was in the habit of memorizing phone numbers of everyone that was special to him. He had his parent’s phone numbers and Marzia’s and Chiara’s, even though he sometimes tried to forget hers. 

It also just was not the time to talk about that kind of cute stuff when Kyle’s father had just died. Elio grabbed Oliver’s wrist and walked out of the store. He made eyes at Lady Bird, who seemed to understand that that meant ‘call me if anything happens, I’m serious’. She seemed to understand and she shooed them off in a loving way. She was so kind and loved Oliver so much that it filled him with more love that his worlds were connecting so smoothly. 

The problem started when they got out of the shop. Oliver could tell that Elio was antsy and he didn’t want to be ‘exploring the city’, but doing something to help. He was the one that spoke up, amidst Elio rambling about all the facts that he had learned about the city while he had been there. 

“Elio.” Elio looked up and he realized that he was crying, feeling so powerless. “You don’t want to do this, I can tell.” 

Elio felt terrible. He wanted to be a good tour guide for Oliver, he wanted to be a good everything for him, if he was being honest with himself, but that wasn’t possible. “I want whatever you want, Oliver.” 

“Bullshit.” Elio felt like Oliver had slapped him. He had never been called out like this before, especially not by Oliver. 

“What?” 

“You want to do something for Kyle. I can tell. You are too good of a person to just take your boy- to take me exploring the city while this is happening.” 

Elio tried to ignore the headrush that came from Oliver almost calling himself his boyfriend, but it was too much. He swayed in place, and Oliver caught him.

“Okay, let’s get some food in you, and then we’ll work up a care package of some kind. Maybe we can do some house cleaning as well. We’ll be okay, Elio. We all will be. We’ve made it this far, somehow, and you and Kyle are strong enough to get through this. And you are the reason that he doesn’t have to go through that alone.” 

“I guess so.” 

Oliver laughed. Elio had no idea how to take this. “I wish you could see what a good person you were. You really have no idea, do you?” 

Elio looked up and shook his head. He wasn’t a good person. He was pretty selfish, and he was just doing for Kyle what anyone else would do, he was pretty sure. Oliver was much better than he could ever be when it really came down to it. 

“No, I’m not.” Oliver was looking at Elio with so much openness, he was inclined to believe him. Especially since he was pretty sure Oliver had just read his mind. “You didn’t know you said that all out loud, did you?” Elio shook his head. That made him feel better, though. He didn’t need Oliver able to read his mind and see how much he really thought about him. 

They walked by a deli and decided to walk in. It looked harmless enough, and they both felt relatively at home in a deli. It was the kind of experience where you could basically expect the same thing no matter where you went. It was the home wherever you went that made Elio feel safe. He had been to this one before, by himself, when he was left alone for a meal, and the woman at the counter seemed to recognize him. Oliver looked at him and laughed after the woman brought him to ‘his table’ by the window. 

“What? I like people watching when I read.” 

Oliver reached across the table and held his hand. “That’s one of the many things that I love about you. You are one of the only people I know that try to multitask when reading.” Elio smiled a little bit too big, and Oliver realized he had said the ‘l’ word but wasn’t showing any signs of backing down or taking his hand out of Elio’s. Elio knew that it would take longer for Oliver to say the whole sentence if he ever did, but this sure as hell was a start. He seemed to sense the second concern, because he said, “it’s ok, no one knows us here. Times are changing, you know? I can feel it.” Elio let himself melt into the grip while they waited for their food. Oliver got a hamburger, typical, and Elio munched on lox even though it was ‘far past breakfast’ according to Oliver. 

“But the whole point is that you can get breakfast here at any time. Haven’t you seen any fun movies were they have breakfast late? Where’s your sense of adventure?”

Oliver scoffed. “You’re right, I forgot that breakfast food at 2 pm was such a bold statement.” 

Their banter continued until it was time to pay the check. Oliver got it. Elio tried to protest, but he was getting absolutely nowhere with him. Oliver explained by simply saying, “I owe you and your family more than you could ever imagine. Let me get this.” Elio didn’t know what this meant, but it felt incredibly special and intimate, so he accepted it. 

Later, they went where Elio pulled them into a local convenience store. Oliver looked at him questioningly, but ultimately, he knew Kyle best, so Oliver trusted him. Elio bought what he knew to be Kyle’s favorite tobacco and rolling papers, as well as buying a normal pack for himself and Oliver. When Oliver gave him a questioning look, he explained that Kyle preferred to roll his own cigarettes, which earned an impressed nod from Oliver. He knew that there would be some things that Kyle and Oliver very much agreed with each other on, and this was even more proof of that, which made him very happy. 

Elio then directed them to the bookstore that he had been to a lot of times in his small amount of time in Sacramento, and the guy working at the desk greeted him with a familiar smile after Elio greeted him by name, that made Oliver tense next to him. Elio didn’t mind that, but he wanted to nip that in the bud. He said to Oliver once they were out of Mark’s earshot, “do you really think I’ve been throwing myself all around this town? Calm down. It’s always been you.” 

Oliver bumped his shoulder but didn’t try to deny it. It wasn’t worth it. They knew each other too well to try to deny and read thoughts like this. Elio also knew that Oliver would never admit this insecurity by himself, and he prided himself on being able to read him so well. Elio ended up picking up one book that looked just douchey enough for Kyle, and a nicer one that would be out of his comfort zone, and then a book he had heard Kyle’s mom talk about in passing that she was looking forward to coming out. He could appreciate the anticipation of a book coming out, and he was pretty sure she hadn’t gotten it yet or even had time to think about it. On their way home, they stopped at a flower stand to pick up some flowers for the house. Oliver seemed to be more and more smitten with Elio with every stop they were making, and Elio liked this, but he was still concerned for Kyle. 

“Can you check again, please?” Oliver rolled his eyes, but he wasn’t actually angry. 

“I’ve checked every half hour, and I would have heard it if it rang, because the ringer is all the way up, at your request, but no, I do not have any missed calls or voicemails and none from the Sacramento area code. He’ll call if he needs anything. He has people and we are doing a good thing for him, okay?” Oliver put an arm around him as they got to the house. Elio had to reach down and get the key under the rug, he hated that he had to leave the warm embrace, but he had to get them inside so he could try to make things nice for Kyle and Mrs. Scheible. 

He forced Oliver to sit down because he was not about to let Oliver do what he felt he had to do. He cleaned the kitchen as Oliver watched on fondly, knowing that this was what he needed to do. He put the flowers in a vase and cleaned the fridge out. He was starting to sweep the kitchen when he heard a car pull up. He looked out the window and saw a car he didn’t recognize, but it was Danny at the driver’s seat. An interesting development, but it was probably good for him. He waited to see them get out to see if Danny was maybe going to come inside or not. It seemed like he wasn’t. They seemed to be talking before Kyle got out, but he got out alone. Elio went to the door and Oliver followed. He was holding the tobacco out of the bag, and he was holding the book bag so that Kyle would be able to see what it was. He wanted Kyle to know that he was on his team for sure. 

Elio opened the door for Kyle and he saw Kyle realize everything that he had in his hands and knew he did a good job. He handed Kyle a cigarette he had rolled beforehand for him. He started to apologize because it wasn’t perfect, but he couldn’t get the words out. Kyle took the cigarette and put it behind his ear before enveloping Elio in a huge hug. He could feel that Kyle was crying and that he just needed to be hugged. Elio absently hoped that Oliver wasn’t bothered by this, but he realized that Oliver had joined in the hug, holding Kyle in a beautiful and safe space. That just for now, if not for very long, everything was allowed to be okay for Kyle. He had nothing to worry about and he was barely even standing on his own feet anymore, he was basically being carried by Elio and Oliver. It felt like family, it felt safe and it felt right. 

Kyle walked through the kitchen and saw the flowers next to the book on the table and looked at Elio. “Was this you?” Elio just nodded. He didn’t feel like he deserved any gratitude from Kyle, he just did what he thought he should, what he thought that anyone would do. Kyle looked at him nervously, like he was going to ask for something. “Hey, um, can you maybe sleep in my room tonight? Or I can sleep in yours on the floor, I just don’t know if I can be alone. My mom’s staying at the hospital and then going to work, it’s ok if-“

“Of course, you can. You can sleep on the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.” That was Oliver, with an answer that Elio never expected. It was good, because it seemed like he wasn’t jealous of the non-thing that had happened between him and Kyle, and he shouldn’t be, for that reason alone. They all walked into the room, seeming to know that even though it was early evening, it was time to lay down after everything that had happened. It wasn’t that hard to read the situation, and they all fell naturally into the right positions. Oliver was laying against the wall behind Elio, and Elio was facing Kyle. Kyle looked happy, he looked like he felt safe. 

“Is this okay?” Kyle looked worried. 

“Yeah, are you okay with being on the end?” Oliver was being amazing and Elio wanted to cry he was so grateful, but this wasn’t about him, he just leaned more into Oliver to communicate that. 

“This is perfect, really, thank you.” 

They settled into a nice silence until Kyle spoke up again. “I kissed Danny today.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting to see a better plot line that will be wrapping up in a chapter or so. Thank you so much for following this for so long and being patient with how long it's taken me to update, I feel awful about it honestly. 
> 
> As always, your comments mean the world to me and so do kudos and the fact that you read this at all. 
> 
> my tumblr is @/lilchalamet


	14. Kyle POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyle looks for support.

It should have been weirder. Being in a bed with Elio and Oliver at the same time should have been more awkward, and shouldn’t feel as normal as it did. Maybe it felt normal because nothing else was in Kyle’s life. His dad was dead and he had no idea how he would have handled this if Elio wasn’t living at their house. He never thought that he would admit to needing someone, even to himself, but it was the truth. Elio was one of the best people that Kyle had ever met. He was a slick shit and pretty much every girl at school was in love with him, but that was no fault of his own. He was even coming around to liking Oliver. Simply because he was so good to Elio was reason enough to not put him on a shit list like he had so desperately wanted to do from day one. It was so nice that he decided to talk about something else, something that was on his mind, but not so heavy because he felt at home. 

“I kissed Danny today.” Kyle didn’t know how much information to give, he wanted to base it off of their reactions. There was no way of knowing what they would say, and he hoped they would be supportive, but with everything else going on, he had no idea. 

“Oh?” Elio’s reaction. Neutral, wanting to know more about the situation, or wanting to know whatever Kyle was willing to tell. 

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Kyle didn’t know that he needed that from Oliver. Oliver who, for the most part, could have just pretended not to care, could have pretended to be asleep for all he knew, but instead, it seemed like he actually cared about Kyle’s well-being. In the beginning, Kyle had wanted to hate Oliver, had wanted to have a feud with him from the beginning, but having him there as someone that actually seemed to give a shit was a nice surprise. 

“He drove me home from New Helvetia. And that’s all we did, but he really cares about me, I think.” Kyle had never expected to be wondering about whether or not someone cared about him, but it seemed like Danny might. Danny was probably the person that knew him the best, other than Elio. But, Danny was the person that Kyle had told the most to. Elio was just an observant son of a bitch and had started to figure Kyle out way too quick for his liking. 

“We just care about you, Kyle. I know I haven’t known you for very long but you’re special to Elio, and I can see that. You deserve to feel special, but it might be a hard time to be putting yourself out there.” There were a lot of things that Kyle never expected from this day. One of them being Oliver being so gentle with him. It made him want to take his claws out of Elio and let him be with Oliver and be happy. They were happy, it seemed like. It was a weird feeling not feeling like a third wheel with them. They were so happy together that he felt like he could be that happy too, maybe not right away, but someday. 

It seemed like all three of them were getting tired, so they all slowly drifted off to sleep. Kyle was worried that he wouldn’t be able to sleep because of the day, but he fell asleep not too long after Elio and Oliver did. 

When Kyle woke up, Elio was gone. Oliver was still sleeping, and he didn’t want to wake him up, but he wanted to start his day and make anything seem normal. When he shifted around, it woke Oliver up. Oliver looked at him with more sympathy than Kyle was ever used to. 

“Hey, how are you?” Oliver paused for a moment, and Kyle was working on an answer, but before he could bullshit Oliver, Oliver spoke again. “You don’t need to bullshit for my benefit. I am going to be out of here in no time, and I won’t tell Elio anything that you don’t want to tell him yourself.” 

“I don’t know if it’s settled in yet?” Kyle asked it as a question, but as soon as he did, it settled in. The weight and implications of what had happened the day before were suddenly too heavy. He didn’t know what to do with himself. It was like his whole body was on fire and he was surrounded by gasoline. He didn’t even realize he was crying until he felt Oliver’s huge body engulf him in a hug. 

“I get it.” 

“How could you possibly?” Kyle knew he was being childish, but he didn’t think that anyone in the entire world could possibly understand what he was going through. Oliver didn’t let go of him, though, so he was being an asshole into his huge shoulder. 

“I felt the same way when my dad died.” Kyle balked. He felt like a real asshole. 

“Oliver”

“I haven’t told Elio yet, so maybe that’s why you don’t know. But don’t worry, this isn’t about me. This is about you.” Oliver was being too nice. Kyle wanted him to be mad, he wanted him to throw him off the bed and give him a piece of his mind. He wanted to physically fight him. 

Kyle started throwing punches at Oliver’s back. He wanted a reaction, he wanted something to feel anything other than the sadness. If that meant getting rocked by Oliver in the face, then so be it. “Why aren’t you fighting back? Fight! Me!” Kyle was running out of steam, but not of anger. It was a tough place to be in. Eventually he crumpled. That’s when he heard someone else come in. It was Elio, it had to be. From the way his footsteps hit the carpet in a way that was just so and the fact that his mom was not coming home anytime soon. He was worried all of a sudden, because it seemed as if he might be in a compromising position with Oliver, even though that was the farthest thing from what was happening. 

Instead, he got the opposite response, he felt Elio take him in with a hug on the other side. Once again, he was completely surrounded by people he loved. He wanted to go out. He needed to be able to go out and live his life without being scared and wanting to stay inside forever. He figured that if he went with Elio and Oliver that it would be good. They would know how to take care of him and leave him alone when he needed it. 

“Can we go to New Helvetia?” Kyle felt nervous asking. It felt like he was asking his parents to stay out past curfew. He wanted to call Danny and invite him to come too, but that wasn’t going to happen unless they said yes. 

“You want us to come?” Elio asked, still hugging him, the question going mostly into his hair. Kyle just nodded. He needed them, at least for now. 

“I can stay behind, I don’t want to intrude.” Oliver sounded nervous, for the first time since he had gotten there. 

Kyle didn’t expect this response at all. “No, no. I want you both to come. Please.” He felt like they were a unit. They were a unit that was incredibly supportive. Especially Oliver, unexpectedly so. He couldn’t believe that Elio didn’t know about Oliver’s father. He looked at Elio with what must have been a sad face, because Elio looked increasingly concerned. “Let’s go!” 

Kyle wanted to be back in control, so, without saying anything, he grabbed the keys to his car and got in the driver’s seat. He needed to be the one that was taking them and he needed to show them that he could do things if he wanted to. He drove them to the shop like it was second nature. He could have blacked out and woken up at the coffee shop. It almost felt like he did, if he was being honest with himself. Oliver in the front seat and Elio in the back seat seemed to understand that he wasn’t exactly in the talking mood, and they respected that. 

When they walked in, Lady Bird looked surprised but happy to see them. She yelled to someone in the back that she was taking a break and seemed to get a positive response because, within seconds, she had taken off her apron and walked around the counter to where they all were standing. “Kyle.” Lady Bird took Kyle into her arms, and he had a feeling that she was mouthing something to Oliver and Elio behind him, but he didn’t want to think about it too much. “I talked to Danny. How are you?” Lady Bird took Kyle to a two-person table. Elio and Oliver seemed to understand that this was a two-person conversation, and went to the counter to get drinks. 

Kyle didn’t know how to breach the subject, so he decided to be blunt. He was over beating around the bush anymore. Not that he ever really did, but that was the old Kyle, the one that cared about what other people thought about him first before how he was getting his point across. “How much did he tell you?” Kyle really hoped that Lady Bird wouldn’t hear his voice crack, or at least ignore it, but that didn’t seem to be the case. She reached out and took his hand. 

“You really like him, don’t you?” Lady Bird scrunched up her face like she was trying to x-ray Kyle’s brain and find his deepest truth. This made Kyle feel like maybe she could. 

“I don’t know, Birdy.” Kyle didn’t want to hurt her feelings. She was so good to him, and he didn’t want her to flip on him because of this. 

“Calm down, Kyle. I don’t care about you dating my gay ex-boyfriend. That is literally the furthest reason why I asked you. I just want you to be happy. I don’t want you to be doing this to fill a void.” 

“I really like him. I have for a while, I think.” Kyle was lost in thought, and Elio brought over a coffee and placed it in front of him. Elio kissed him on the head and whispered in his ear. 

“We’re going to be over there, okay? If you need to leave, or anything, we’ll follow your lead.” Elio stood up and walked away, brushing hands with Oliver on the way to a table in by the window. 

“Shit, they’re cute as hell, aren’t they?” Kyle nodded, it was really all he could say. She only knew the half of it, really. They were two of the most generous people he had ever met, and he didn’t understand how he deserved any of the kindness they had given him over the last couple of days, but he was sure as hell thankful for it. 

“I think he likes you, too. Danny, I mean.” Lady Bird looked like she had been thinking about this for a while. “I can tell by the way he looks at you. I mean, really, it’s so nice.” 

“I don’t know if anything is going to happen for a while, because of my dad and everything, but he’s always been way too good to me.” Kyle frowned, thinking about all the times that Danny was too nice to him, or just too supportive, considering what kind of a person Kyle had been or was for a long time. 

“Stop that.” 

“Stop what?” 

“I can see that you’re thinking bad thoughts about yourself and that is literally the last thing that you need right now.” Damn, she was good. 

“Okay, fine.” On his dejected sigh after fine, the bell of the shop door rang. Lady Bird, who was facing the door, gasped and put her hand over her mouth. 

“Oops! My break is over, gotta go!” Lady Bird kissed Kyle on the cheek and went over to say something to Elio and Oliver. Kyle was confused, but he was used to these flighty exits of hers. He chuckled at the accidental bird pun he made when Danny walked into his line of vision. 

“Can I sit here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as I can tell, there is going to be one more Elio POV and then an epilogue with both POV! Thank you so much for reading this nonsense, and I am sorry it has taken me so long to update. 
> 
> my tumblr is @/lilchalamet xoxo


	15. Elio POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elio and Oliver have a talk.

Elio was stressed, and he knew that Oliver could tell. If Elio had to boil his stress down to its most basic, he was stressed about two things. One is that he never knew what to do when someone had a loved one that died. He had never had that happen to him, and even though he could be sympathetic, he was mostly paralyzed by the fear of what would happen when that did eventually happen to him. The second reason was the far more selfish one, and Elio ranked it as second, if not mostly to make himself feel better, as it was in a bitter fight for all of his attention. Oliver had just gotten to Sacramento to spend time with him and immediately this had happened. Elio had been so consumed by trying to make Kyle feel better and doing everything that he could for Kyle that he had barely had any time to be with Oliver. Oliver who was leaving soon. Oliver who maybe would be leaving angry soon, thanks to all of this. 

Despite that, he was so thankful that Oliver was there to help him. He was proving to be an amazing help. He was kind to Kyle in all the ways that seemed like it was just what he needed. With that came a level of sadness in Oliver’s eyes that Elio made a note to ask him about later. He knew that Oliver was the kind of person that would let himself fade into the background, even if he needed attention. Elio thought that the trip he was lovingly calling a ‘family trip’ to New Helvetia in his head would be the perfect place to talk to Oliver. 

Once they got there, he saw Lady Bird was working, which he was thankful for. They had left there so abruptly when Kyle had come in with the news that it felt like they owed it to her to catch her up on what had happened. As soon as they walked in, Lady Bird dutifully took her break and came over to them. She ushered Kyle to a two-person table and nodded with her head at a different one to Elio. She was letting them have a break. He really appreciated that. Dealing with grief, even if you are not the one dealing with it is exhausting. Elio decided to order coffees from the guy that took over for Lady Bird and instructing Oliver to sit down at a table. Oliver headed over to a table in clear view of Kyle and Lady Bird, but far enough away to give them their privacy. 

Elio took what he knew to be Kyle’s coffee over to him and then went over to Oliver at their table. He took a deep breath and decided to both apologize and breach the subject as fast as possible. Elio took a sip of coffee first because he had some priorities. 

“I’m so sorry. I mean, really. You come here and basically have to immediately deal with crisis control and that is not fair at all to you. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to leave. It’s unfair, I mean, everything I’ve done to you is unfair, I”

Oliver put his hand on Elio’s. Elio was rambling. He knew that, but really he had so much to say and didn’t realize how much he had to say until he started talking. He has had so many chances to mess up things with Oliver and it seemed like he was taking every opportunity. “Elio. Stop. I’m not going anywhere. If you think that something like this would change my mind about us you don’t know me at all.” Elio blinked, not knowing how to respond to that. He thought he knew Oliver, and more than that, he wanted to know Oliver. 

“I want to know everything about you. And I wanted to thank you. I know that you are sad and I don’t know why, but I wish that I could take that away. Also, I know that you are amazing to Kyle and I couldn’t thank you enough.” 

“I care about you and Kyle is clearly in your life now and I want to be able to help you. I have an idea of what he’s going through and sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone that understands what that’s like.” 

Elio was shocked. As far as he knew, both of Oliver’s parents were alive. There were things that they didn’t agree on and he hated that Oliver had to go through that, but he didn’t know if anything had happened. He didn’t know how to ask, but he wanted to let Oliver know that he was there for him. He put his hand on Oliver’s and decided to apologize again. He wasn’t very good at apologizing, but it seemed to be the thing to do. 

“Oliver?” Elio braced himself to ask the question. “Did something happen when you went back after the summer?”

“My dad died.” Elio’s breath caught in his throat. He didn’t know what to say. He knew that Oliver and his father had had differences, but this was nothing near something he was equipped to deal with. 

“I’m so sorry. I wish I knew what to say. I don’t know if there is anything I can say. I love you, you know?” 

“I do know, but I want you to know that my dad dying was something that needed to happen for me to be happy. For me to be able to come here and be with you. For me to not have to get married. I know that sounds crazy, but I’m just glad that it’s you that I’m with, and no one else.” 

“God, Oliver, I’m so sorry.” Elio put his head on the table, it was the only thing that he could think to do. There was nothing else that he knew to do. Oliver picked his head up. It was like Elio was drowning and Oliver was a hand to finally pull him up out of the water. Despite everything, Oliver was the one saving him. Elio looked over at Kyle to see how he was doing, and as he did, he saw that Danny was walking in. He smiled because this was probably exactly what Kyle needed. Kyle would never have asked Danny to come to hang out with him, but he was going to love having him there. He motioned to Oliver that it was happening. Oliver, in turn, motioned to the door after smiling. He nodded. 

Elio walked over to the counter and before he could say anything, Lady Bird read his mind. “You and your lovebird go and get out of here. If anything happens, I will call you and let you know. We got it under control, here.” 

Elio and Oliver walked hand in hand back to the Scheible house. Kyle’s mother was out of the house at work and dealing with funeral preparations, so they would be home alone for a while, which was a nice break from all the chaos. Elio hated that he was thinking about what he was thinking about because he was home alone with Oliver, but when he looked over at Oliver, it seemed that he was thinking the same thing. Or, something near the same thing. Elio nodded at his door and Oliver nodded. There was nothing else that needed to be said. 

Elio opened the door to his room and he felt nervous. They had done this before, no matter what they were about to do, but this was in a different, more permanent context. He hadn’t told Oliver that he was thinking about going to school on the east coast, bringing them even closer together in the future. Oliver followed him inside and closed the door. All good things. Elio sat on the bed and decided he was going to be presumptuous. They had had a terrible week with everything going on, he wanted to be able to be right and feel good again. Oliver laughed at Elio when he patted the bed next to him. Despite this, he sat down right where Elio had patted his hand. 

Oliver looked at Elio in a way that felt like he always had, but it was a new feeling. It was a feeling of security behind the look and in receiving it on Elio’s end. Elio didn’t have a very long time to think about it, though, because Oliver was kissing him. Oliver was kissing him and making sure it was okay, even though anything Oliver ever wanted to do was okay. Elio thinks that he would have let Oliver kill him, maybe. He didn’t want to get too distracted. What he wanted was for Oliver to not be wearing a shirt anymore. He ripped and tugged at it, and Oliver got the message. Oliver took Elio’s shirt off in the same amount of haste, and to make everything easier, he took off his pants, too. To show Oliver that this is what he wanted. 

Oliver seemed to get the hint and laid Elio down on the bed. It was everything he had expected and nothing at the same time. He had become so interwoven with Sacramento and Oliver and being Elio and being with Oliver that it felt as though nothing had changed. This time, that was good. After Oliver had left the first time, it felt as though nothing had changed, but in the worst way. Elio was still Elio and he was still living in the villa for some months of the year, but he was still with his family. He loved them, sure, but a part of him had wished that he could have looked in the mirror and seen something cataclysmically different about his appearance after his summer with Oliver. 

All Elio wanted to do was look up at Oliver. God, he loved that view. He thought that he might not ever see it again. He had gotten used to it by telling himself that it wasn’t that great, he had made it better in his head. But, in fact, it was the opposite. He had made it worse in his head. Feeling Oliver and seeing Oliver at the same time was all Elio ever wanted for the rest of his life. He knew that this was a weird realization to be making at the time he was making it, but god, Oliver was perfect.   
Later, when Oliver was surrounding him with body heat and warmth, Elio felt safe enough to rest his eyes and sleep. He was sent off to sleep by a kiss on the forehead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck me, y'all. i'm so sorry this took so long for me to update. if you still give a shit, thank you. grad school is kicking my whole ass, and i'm trying to still be creative just for me during it. i'm sorry you guys, i feel terrible. 
> 
> tumblr is lilchalamet, yell at me there for being slow at updates


	16. Kyle POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of an era, folks. If people like this and the direction I went in, feel free to ask for an epilogue. I don't know how to quit anything.

There was a lot going through Kyle’s mind, a lot before he even saw that Danny had walked into the coffee shop. One of the most notable things was that it was almost time for Elio to go back to Italy with his family. It was almost winter break and that meant it was almost the end of his time with Elio staying at his house. There was something within Kyle that knew that he would be seeing him again sometime in the future, but that felt too hazy to be real. It felt too far away for him to hold on to and believe as real. He wanted to keep Elio in his life. There was some strange cosmic connection that they shared that made it seem like they were almost destined to have met. 

He was happy to see what Elio and Oliver had together, he really was. If anything, Oliver was someone that came into his life in the way that was never expected and helped him out more than he could ever expect. Oliver was his knight in shining armor that he was more than happy to just know. That had never happened to Kyle before. He had never been just happy to know someone without any expectations of anything else. Everyone else in his life before meeting Elio was someone that he wanted something from or needed something from. Elio, he realized without even trying to, made Kyle a better person. It was as if Elio had changed Kyle against his will, and Kyle had hated it the whole time until he could see the bigger picture. 

What snapped him out of his deep thoughts was the fact that someone was talking to him. It was Danny. “Can I sit here?”

It wasn’t that Kyle never expected to see Danny again, it was that he didn’t expect to see him so soon. He liked Danny. It had taken some time for him to try to figure out whether or not it was because he had lost someone in his life, but talking with Kyle and Oliver and just having them there made him realize he wasn’t just blindly trying to stuff the gaping void in his soul with Danny, but he truly missed having Danny in his life. Not that he would ever admit that to him. 

“Of course! I wasn’t expecting to see you for a while.” Kyle didn’t love how vulnerable that made him sound, but he tried to swallow around that fear with a sip of coffee that he had let get a little too cold for his liking. 

“Birdy called me, I wanted to make sure that you were doing okay. I didn’t want to bother you, but I just want you to know that I care about you. Like, a lot.” Danny was looking at his hands that were resting on the table where they were sitting. It was like it was as hard for him to admit that he needed someone as it was for Kyle. This wasn’t something that Kyle ever expected. Danny seemed like the kind of strong that Kyle could never imagine. He was braver than Kyle, that was sure, but Kyle never realized that maybe he was brave on the outside because he had to be. 

“Bother me?” Kyle was shocked by this. There was no world where Danny would ever bother him. Thinking about it, Danny was one of the reasons he was still at least a little bit sane. If Danny had not been there to see him crack his hard and well built up shell, he didn’t know how he would have dealt with getting the news about his father. “You could never bother me.” That confession spouted out of Kyle like word vomit in a way that he never saw coming. It made him itch for a cigarette. “Listen, do you want to sit outside?” Danny put his hand on Kyle’s now twitching hand. 

“I’ll follow you.” Kyle bit down on a smile. He couldn’t afford to give Danny as much as he wanted to right away. He had made this mistake with Elio, and now Elio was leaving him. Kyle knew that it was nowhere near the same thing, but it felt like enough of a thing for him to not love the feeling in his stomach and chest. He knew that Danny might like him, but that didn’t matter, because the voices in his head were worrying about other things. Like, what if Danny was only being this nice because of his dad? Christ. How had he not thought about this before? 

When they had sat down back at what Kyle would always know as “his table,” and he had lit a cigarette and taken a few healthy drags, he finally decided he would ask. “Are you being this nice to me because of my dad? I know that’s a huge question, but I have to ask. I don’t know what I would do if I found out later that was why you were treating me like this.” 

Danny took way too long to think about this. Well, it certainly felt too long. In reality, it was probably a couple of seconds. “Kyle, you are one of the only people at our entire school that actually sees me as a person. I know that you might not think that, because of how you try to act around everyone else, and I get that, but you were there for me when no one else was.” Kyle nodded. He didn’t nod because he agreed or even believed it, but he nodded because it felt like the right thing to do. 

Kyle didn’t know what to do. He manically wished that he could talk to Oliver and Elio, or at least one of them, because damn it if they didn’t seem to somehow know all the answers. But this wasn’t about figuring out what the right thing to say or do was. Which was a weird conclusion to come to, seeing as how most of his life had been dictated by that. This was about what he wanted, and how to make himself the happiest as possible. He was at this dumb school because of his father. He had met Elio and by proxy met Oliver because of the father at his school telling his mother at home he needed more friends. His mother had signed him up right away, even though Kyle had insisted that he had enough friends with his band and he didn’t have time to cart around some loser for a semester. Something he was embarrassed to even admit to his subconscious was that ‘that loser’ and his tag along other half were some of the best people he had ever met. He decided that he was going to tell them that they next time he saw them. They were about to be in the week of finals, but he didn’t want to forget to make that clear. 

“I guess I’m just scared.” Danny’s voice broke Kyle out of his inner monologue. 

“Scared?” 

“Scared.” 

“Of?” Kyle didn’t understand. If it had been anyone else saying they were scared of him, he would have taken it as a huge compliment. He was determined to be intimidating and someone that clearly communicated ‘do not fuck with me’. The problem was that he wanted the exact opposite with Danny. He wanted to give off the vibe of ‘please do fuck with me, I have no idea how to express it, but I really like you.’ 

“I think you’re going to hurt me, Kyle.” Kyle started to protest this, he would never do that on purpose. “Don’t tell me that you wouldn’t hurt me, because that doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean to hurt Lady Bird, I sure as hell didn’t plan on liking you and having you maybe return that but here we are. I’m scared you are going to hurt me and it’s not going to be anyone’s fault but my own.”

Kyle was having just about enough of this. Well, that and how far away he was from Danny. Had he really not told Danny that he liked him back? That seemed egregious, but he decided that showing was better than telling. He stood up without really thinking about his game plan and walked over to Danny’s side of the table. Kyle kneeled down, Danny looking up at him, confused. Kyle grabbed both sides of Danny’s face, and started to lean in. They had kissed before, but this felt like their real first kiss. It was the first time that it wasn’t paired with any pretense, and it was just them. Kyle didn’t know if Danny was going to help him leaning in, but damn if he wasn’t going to kiss him. Danny, thankfully, after what felt like years, started to lean in to Kyle. 

They kissed. It was amazing and awkward and gross, but Kyle was leaning in, and it was perfect. It wasn’t Kyle’s kiss with Elio that was desperate and looking for anything and anyone, but it was a kiss meant for Danny and Kyle, and no one else. “You know that I like you a lot, right? I didn’t want you to think that I was doing this because I was sad about my dad, or whatever. You’re a good person, Danny.” Kyle hated how heavy this was, so he punched Danny in the shoulder with more love than he expected. “Besides, Birdy tells me your nan has a sick house and I need to see that for myself.”

“Kyle Scheible, I knew you only liked me for my grandmother! I should have known.” If Kyle was listening for any ire or anger in his voice, and he was, there was none to be found. Danny was being genuine with him. Kyle decided that he wanted to kiss him again, just to make sure. Danny, though, was one step ahead of him. 

Kyle and Danny talked for a while longer, but Kyle felt himself being pulled to home. He knew after this talk with Danny that he was going to have a lot of time with him in the future, but his time with Elio and Oliver was slipping through his fingers faster than he could imagine. He tried to look at his watch subtly, but to no avail. Danny caught him right away. “Elio’s leaving soon, isn’t he?” Kyle blushed, not knowing why, but it probably had something to do with the fact that he was admitting to caring about people enough to keep tabs on their comings and goings. This was a new low as far as Kyle was concerned. “Want a ride home?” Kyle nodded without thought. Double whammy. Kyle was admitting to caring about Elio and Oliver and he was also going to allow himself to be taken care of. That was too big of a topic for him to unpack sitting outside New Helvetia, so he decided to file it away for the future. 

The ride home was not eventful, but he did hold Danny’s hand on some of the way back. It felt like he was grounded with something. He had tethers on a couple sides of him. There were people that not only cared about him, but were willing to show it. 

When Danny parked, he kissed Kyle with a promise to see him at school after winter break. Kyle didn’t like that very much. “Or, you know, maybe we could hang out during break?” 

“I suppose we could, couldn’t we?” Danny was becoming too comfortable. There was a time when Danny was intimidated of Kyle and Kyle knew that he had a grasp on his status, but that seemed to be slipping away. Maybe Kyle didn’t have to hate that. 

“Bye, Danny.” Kyle hopped out of the car to see that Elio and Oliver were home and his mother wasn’t. 

Kyle walked in and immediately tripped on a suitcase. Oliver’s suitcase. When Oliver had come in the middle of the semester, everyone had kind of forgotten how long he was supposed to be staying, since he was on a sabbatical, so he stayed the entire semester. He stumbled into the kitchen to see Elio and Oliver talking at the table. Elio was crying. Oliver had his back to him. This was not what was supposed to be happening. Kyle was supposed to come home, tell them all about Danny and how amazing things went and spend an amazing last couple days with Elio and Oliver. Shit. 

Kyle was waiting for Elio to look up at him, and it was taking a really long time. Kyle looked around and saw a book on the end table. Without thinking about it too much, he grabbed it and dropped it. If nothing else, it would be comedic relief. Elio looked up at the noise and Oliver turned around as well. He had been crying too, it was obvious. 

“Hi guys.” Kyle’s mood was a lot lower than he expected it to be, and his voice reflected that. It had a weird crack from where he had been prepared to be. “Oliver, you’re leaving?” Kyle shook his head. Fuck being sad, he was going to be mad. He was going to be so, so angry. “Typical. You’re leaving because things got bad between you and Elio? Or were you tired of being here and not being with a woman that didn’t love you?” 

Elio jumped up and walked over to Kyle, and stood in between Oliver and Kyle, like he was trying to break up a fight. There was never going to be a fight. Kyle was angry, but he wasn’t dumb. He was never going to fight this Greek statue of a man. “Kyle, Oliver has had this ticket booked for a long time now. He has to go back to work.” Kyle took a deep breath. Oliver stood up. This was it. This was going to be the ultimate confrontation. Oliver put a hand on Kyle’s shoulder and lead him to the seat in between where he and Elio had been sitting. 

“Let’s get you sitting down, huh? What happened while we were gone?” 

Kyle tried to shake off the fact that he was going to fight Oliver or at least try to verbally bring him down to his level and told Elio and Oliver a detailed account of what happened with Danny. He was trying to not make it seem like a big deal, but that didn’t seem like something he was going to be able to do. 

Kyle realized that this was not all about him, though, and decided to tread water with Elio and Oliver. “Are you guys going to be okay?” 

Oliver and Elio looked at each other. Oliver nodded at Elio, “you tell him.” Elio looked at Kyle, preparing to deliver the information. 

“Oliver’s coming to the villa for the winter. He’s going to stay the whole time.” Kyle started crying. If anyone ever asked about this, he would deny it to his grave, but he was so happy after such a weird semester that it all just burst out of him. “And we think you should visit, too. Well, if you want, of course.” Elio looked like he felt like he had to rush the last sentence and then provide explanation. “My dad has so many airline miles they’re expiring anyway, so you wouldn’t even need to buy a ticket.”

Kyle looked at both of them. “I think that you guys are the best thing to happen to me in a long time. I can’t thank you enough for that.” 

They hung out for a while longer, talking at the kitchen table, and it really felt like this was a family that Kyle had found. He wasn’t tired from a five minute conversation, because he wasn’t putting on any fronts, he was just being himself. They all got tired and when Kyle was heading to his room, Elio and Oliver followed him. Kyle looked at Elio confused. 

“It’s Oliver’s last night. We might as well have a sleepover like old times.” Elio punched Kyle in the shoulder as if that was something they did all the time. That being said, lying in bed facing Elio and Oliver felt like the most natural thing he could think of. 

They woke up early to drive Oliver to the airport. There were tearful goodbyes, but it was the kind of goodbye that was a see you later, rather than a permanent goodbye. Elio had convinced, with some help from Oliver, Kyle to take the ticket to Italy, so he was going to see Oliver again. 

On the way back from the airport with just Elio, it felt remarkably like the first time he had picked up Elio at the airport. Except this time, despite Kyle’s complaints, they were listening to the Dave Matthews Band. Elio was singing along like it was his job, and if Kyle was singing along too, well, it wasn’t his fault, he got swept up in it. 

Finally, when the day came for Kyle to drop Elio off at the airport to go back to Italy to spend the winter with his family, he felt a sense of completion. They had been here before. They were probably supposed to spend a semester together. It’s like it was meant to happen. Kyle didn’t love to leave anything that sappy, so instead, he sent Elio off with what was now an inside joke. 

After they hugged, Kyle pulled away, already smiling. “Full circle, huh?” Elio just nodded. “Bye, Eliot.” 

And if Kyle stayed in the loading area to make sure that Elio fully reached the security gate, that was something that was going to be kept between himself and the security guard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you endlessly to the people that stuck with this during my humongous break in between chapters towards the end. Everyone that left comments fills this cold, dead heart with so much love. You guys keep me goddamn sane. If you liked it and read this far, you are some of the best people in the world, as far as I'm concerned. 
> 
> tumblr is still @/lilchalamet

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone likes this, I will keep going. Also, I will be attempting to write from Kyles' POV, which is going to be hella difficult, I already know. Thanks, sorry, pls blame Liv (@terxture on tumblr) I am also on tumblr.   
> (lilchalamet.tumblr.com)


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